Chronicles the Japanese military's transformation from honorable soldiers known for their chivalry and kindness towards their wounded and imprisoned enemies into men who massacred hundreds of thousands in the Pacific theater during World War II.

This new edition brings up to date a classic study of the everyday lives of previously institutionalized people with mental retardation. For the first time, the author allowed these people to speak about their own lives, their fears, and their hopes. He focused on the role of stigma in their lives and their efforts to pass as normal, as well as the need they had for normal benefactors.

Now, using the same ethnographic methods, Robert Edgerton follows up the original population over a period of three decades. His new findings greatly expand our knowledge of these individuals, suggesting...

During World War II, many of Japan's soldiers committed such crimes against humanity that the world recoiled in horror. During the notorious six-week-long rape of Nanking in 1937, Japanese forces murdered at least 200,000 men, women, and children. Throughout the Pacific War, Allied prisoners were often starved, tortured, beheaded, even cannibalized. Although Japan's military men fought bravely against outnumbering forces again and again, their astonishing brutality made them a loathsome, unforgivable enemy.While this chapter of Japanese history is well known, few realize that earlier in this...

The Crimean War began as an intensely romantic affair: acts of astonishing bravery, many of them by doctors, women and children, were commonplace. But so was callousness and brutality, and the war soon became an impersonal, long-range killing match that resembled, far in advance, the trench warfare of World War I. It became a showcase for bad generalship and bureaucratic bungling.

In Hidden Heroism, Robert Edgerton investigates the history of Afro-American participation in American wars, from the French and Indian War to the present. He argues that blacks in American society have long-suffered from a natural coward stereotype that is implicit in the racism propagated from America's earliest days, and often intensified as blacks slowly received freedom in American society. For instance, blacks served admirably in various wars, returned home after their service to short-term recognition, and then soon found themselves even more seriously entrenched in a racist system...

Africa's Armies traces the military history of sub-Saharan Africa from the pre-colonial era to the present. Robert Edgerton begins this sweeping chronicle by describing the role of African armies in pre-colonial times, when armed forces or militias were essential to the maintenance and prosperity of their societies. During the colonial era, African soldiers fought with death-defying courage, earning such respect as warriors that they were often recruited into the colonial armies not simply to enforce colonial rule in Africa, but to fight for the European homelands as well. After independence...

This Companion provides the first definitive overview of psychocultural anthropology: a subject that focuses on cultural, psychological, and social interrelations across cultures.

• Brings together original essays by leading scholars in the field
  
• Offers an in-depth exploration of the concepts and topics that have emerged through contemporary ethnographic work and the processes of global change
  
• Key issues range from studies of consciousness and time, emotion, cognition, dreaming, and memory, to the lingering effects of racism and...