The first biography in English of the intellectual giant who founded modern anthropology.

One of the defining intellectuals of the twentieth century, Claude Levi-Strauss revolutionized anthropology, transforming it from the colonial-era study of "exotic" tribes to one consumed with fundamental questions about the nature of humanity and civilization itself. This acclaimed biography not only follows the anthropologist's peripatetic career, from the depths of Amazonia in the 1930s to postwar Paris, but also offers an invaluable guide to his most influential theories. The result seamlessly blends a portrait of an extraordinary life with a primer on twentieth-century anthropology.