Coming Age in Samoa Author:Margaret Mead Coming of Age in Samoa, Margaret Mead's psychological study of youth in a primitive society, is today recognized as a scientific classic. However, when first published, as Dr. Mead points out in her preface to this Morrow Quill edition, it was "the first piece of work by a serious professional anthropologist written for the educated layma... more »n in which all the paraphernalia of scholarship designed to convince one's professional colleagues and confuse the laity was deliberately laid aside."« less
I lived in American Samoa for three years and visited the island that Mead did her research. The Samoans were very accurately depicted in her work, I think.