Franz Boas, the major founding figure of anthropology as a discipline in the United States, came to America from Germany in 1886. This volume in the highly acclaimed History of Anthropology series is the first extensive scholarly exploration of Boas' roots in the German intellectual tradition and late nineteenth-century German anthropology, and offers a new perspective on the historical development of ethnography in the United States.

George W. Stocking, Jr., is the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science at the University of Chicago. He is editor of the History of Anthropology series published by the University of Wisconsin Press and the author of After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888-1951; Victorian Anthropology; Race, Culture, and Evolution; and The Ethnographer’s Magic. In 1993, he was awarded the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.