Review

"In this objective and scrupulous account, David H. Price performs an invaluable service by raising a central ethical question: To what extent should social scientists lend their skills to national tasks, even if the goals are not those with which they are in agreement? By carefully documenting what American anthropologists did to help win World War II, he illuminates that murky ethical space that lies between patriotism and the tasks of science."--Sidney W. Mintz, Johns Hopkins University "David H. Price is, without any doubt, our foremost authority on the ways in which anthropologists were used in World War II and the Cold War and on the ways in which those wars changed anthropology. Price knows how to use the Freedom of Information Act like no other anthropologist, and he has succeeded in unearthing a wealth of fascinating information about the military uses of anthropology in World War II. Anthropological Intelligence is at once a fascinating and entertaining source of trivia on anthropology's ancestors and a keenly argued lament for what war has done to a humane discipline. Showing an encyclopedic command of the facts, Price writes with urbane elegance and a strikingly judicious compassion toward those whom he critiques. Anthropological Intelligence could not be more timely. At a moment when war is once more on anthropologists' minds, it will become the canonical book on anthropology and the 'good war' while raising troubling questions for those in the age of the 'war on terror' who would like, once more, to mobilize anthropology for war."--Hugh Gusterson, author of People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex