Threatening Anthropology is a timely and critically important book, given the Bush administration’s use of the war in Iraq to justify repressive legislation to erode U.S. citizens’ civil rights. Basing his work on 30,000 pages of government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), oral histories, archival documents, correspondence, and published sources, David Price should be admired for his unrelenting drive in amassing the data. For those not familiar with the FOIA, I strongly suggest reading Price’s appendix “On Using the Freedom of Information Act” (pp. 355–361). The process of filing a successful “FOIA” is painfully slow and can take more than a decade to complete. It is needlessly tedious, requires the knowledge of arcane government codes, is subject to multiple disclosure exemptions, routinely involves an extended appeal process, and, years later, the most dispassionate researcher cannot help but conclude that government agencies such as the FBI resist every single effort to release the most basic information that may or may not be of interest.

During the course of Price’s 12-year quest for government documents, he filed over 500 FOIA requests and over 250 appeals, and he “aggressively filed numerous administrative appeals” (p. 358). He also had the support of Senator Patty Murray and Congressman Brian Baird. Was all this necessary? In a word, yes. For instance, after waiting five years, Price was informed that the FBI had no records pertaining to anthropologist Gene Weltfish. After multiple appeals, and another wait of several years, he received 412 pages from FBI files about Weltfish. Given the inherent problems of filing FOIAs, Price concludes that the process is overseen by government agencies, for example, the FBI, that all too often exhibit a “sloppy standard of professionalism” (p. 356) . Price maintains the FBI’s “slip shod approach to fulfilling FOIA requests is a serious matter and merits the examination of a congressional oversight committee” (p. 356). Price’s perception of the FBI and the FOIA process is harsh and accurate. His experience obtaining records from various governmental agencies helps explain why readers will occasionally encounter sharp words in the text. Do not let this mislead you, however—Price’s tone may annoy some readers, but no one should question the factual material on which he bases his analysis. His research meets the highest standards possible, and he meticulously details the impact the Cold War had on U.S. anthropologists, anthropological theory, and the American Anthropological Association.

Price’s book is a particularly valuable contribution to the history of anthropology because he reveals an unknown side to that history. The story Price paints of the impact the Cold War had on anthropology is dark and depressing. Of the many appalling events discussed by Price, two incidents stand out: The first is the utter failure of the American Anthropological Association to take action when its members were under fire by various governmental agencies. A perfect example of the AAA’s refusal to protect its members was Richard Morgan’s firing from the Ohio State Museum. Despite many appeals to the AAA for help and the formation of a special investigative committee, Morgan was blacklisted and driven out of the discipline and the United States. The second is a long letter sent by George Peter Murdoch to J. Edgar Hoover that alleged that communists were attempting to take over the AAA. Murdoch’s poison pen letter will send a chill down many people’s spines. Murdoch specifically identified 12 scholars whom he suspected of being communists. For his efforts, a few months later Murdoch was appointed chair of the AAA’s Committee on Scientific Freedom, designed to investigate violations of academic freedom.

Price’s research into the Cold War era and the impact it had on activist anthropologists highlights a glaring weakness in the work of George Stocking and his acolytes, who dominate the U.S. historicist school—namely, their resistance to consider the intersection of political beliefs and academic scholarship. To date, historians of anthropology have not adequately explored the impact politics has had on the scholarship of major figures in the discipline, Oscar Lewis, Alexander Lesser, Bernhard Stern, and Leslie A. White, to name but a few. Laura Nader has noted that the depoliticalization of the history of anthropology was not accidental and has labeled this shortcoming the “phantom factor”—that is, our understanding of the past is apolitical. Like Price and Nader, I do not want to abandon historicism’s relativistic appreciation of time and place but, rather, inject it with an appreciation for the political variables involved in a given scholar’s career or the establishment of a theoretical construct. Not all scholars were politically driven, but some were, and one cannot understand their work without a nuanced view of politics. Given this, Price’s work represents a welcome and long overdue departure from the history of anthropology as presented by Stocking. It also represents a wake-up call to those interested in the discipline’s past and present. As such, I consider Price’s book to be the starting point for a more nuanced and politicized history of anthropology. His work, thus, lays the foundation for future studies and must be considered required reading for every anthropologist and scholar interested in anthropology’s past.