Mead's "Coming of Age in Samoa" Named 20th Century's Worst NF Title
Staff -- Library Journal, 1/24/2000
Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, a anthropological treatise on the sexual development of natives of the Manu'an Islands published in 1928, has been named the worst nonfiction title of the 20th Century by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Wilmington, DE. According to news reports, the academic think tank criticized the volume, which concluded that the island's natives were immune to the sexual complexes suffered by Westerners, as "scandalously sloppy" and "patently false." The group said that "so amusing did the natives find the white woman's prurient questions that they told her the wildest tales -- and she believed them."
