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Gin, Sex, Malaria, and the Hunt for Academic Prestige (chronicle.com)
88 points by bookofjoe on July 26, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments



This was a really good read. It's a thoroughly enjoyable peek into the private lives behind influential careers.

I especially enjoyed the parts about Margaret Mead and her efforts to simultaneously sort out her relationship to herself as a misfit seemingly unsuited to the world into which she was born and the question of how to have a serious career as a woman in a man's world.


I really liked this article also. I just happen to be reading "Guns, Germs, and steel" so it was fun to actually get some close up perspective from someone doing field work. The discussion about the changing relationships was quite interesting. I am grateful that Mead reported on herself and the other scientists along with the supposed subjects of their field trips.


Well that headline was a journey. I feel like the author was going for sort of a Hunter S. Thompson kind of style, but the underlying story unfortunately just wasn't interesting enough to pull it off.


The underlying story in most of Hunter S. Thomspon's books is barely interesting (a guy gets an assignment to cover a motorcycle rally, misses the action, gets stoned with his lawyer friend in Vegas, they meet a girl, have a few drug episodes, skip town, come back to cover a cop convention, have a few more drug episodes). It's all in the style and insight, not the plot.


Guns, Germs and Steel anyone?




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