Volume 14, Number 3 · February 12, 1970
Bedtime Story
By Edmund R. Leach
Hamlet's Mill
by Giorgio de Santillana, by Hertha von Dechend
Gambit, 484 pp., $10.00
As will presently be apparent, my reaction to this book is hostile—so, before my prejudices get out of hand, let me try to explain what it is all about. Both authors are internationally celebrated professors of the History of Science, the one from M.I.T., the other from Frankfurt. The latter has the additional qualification of having been a pupil of Leo Frobenius, the romantically inclined German ethnologist who, in 1897, originated the concept of Kulturkreis, an intellectual tool by means of which the geographical distribution of cultural elements might be used to reconstruct an historical sequence of hypothetical past civilizations.
Review, 1803 words
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