Book: Gods of the Upper Air

I'm really excited about 'Gods of the Upper Air; How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex and Gender in the Twentieth Century' by Charles King. It chronicles the highly adventurous beginnings of cultural anthropologists such as Margaret Mead. Mead and other early pioneers have been criticized for their data collection methods and the subsequent results of their analysis.

My question is whether it is fair to judge those who were making it up as they went by today's standards? These anthropologists made western intellectuals rethink what they thought they knew about 'primitive' and 'less advanced' cultures. Maybe it is an early example of unstructured data providing a compelling picture even if some of it is in error?

Highly Recommended. Here are links to knopfdoubleday.com - amazon.com - barnesandnoble.com