To Know the Place / Wright, Gary A / Closeout

A scholar goes home again through the eyes of his discipline and sees things he never saw before. Gary A. Wright is professor of anthropology at SUNY, Albany. He offers a compelling analysis of what small-town life means—and what it misses.

"With this wonderful book, Dr. Wright joins an exciting moment in the history of the field to craft a highly personal account of his coming of age as an American and as a scholar. Among the first of such accounts to come from the pen of an archaeologist, this memoir reflects Dr. Wright's poetic and funny insights into everyday life in the tiny corner of rural Michigan where he grew up in the 1950s. This book fulfills the best spirit of reflexive anthropology. In examining his life, culture, and career, he also succeeds in defamiliarizing the world that many of us take for granted. Rural Michigan emerges from his commentary like an exotic tropical island."—Gary H. Gossen, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies at SUNY, Albany.

Useful for lay reading, and as a supplemental text in courses in American culture and social history, Midwestern history, recent U.S. history, ethnographic methods, and related areas.