Anthro Book Picks: January 2026
- Jan 15
- 8 min read
Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
David Van Reybrouck
On a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a handful of people raised a homemade cotton flag and, on behalf of 68 million compatriots, announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first country to rid itself of colonial rule after World War II.
In this vivid history, renowned scholar and celebrated author of Congo David Van Reybrouck captures a period of extraordinary tumult and chaos to tell the story of Indonesia's momentous revolution, known as the "Revolusi." Encompassing several hundred years of history, he details the formation of the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese invasion that followed, and the young rebels who engaged in armed resistance once the occupation ended. British and Dutch troops were sent to restore order and keep peace, but instead ignited the first modern war of decolonization. America, too, became embroiled with the Indonesians' fierce struggle for freedom. That struggle inspired independence movements in Asia, Africa, and the Arab world, especially in the wake of Indonesia's monumental 1955 Bandung Conference, the first global conference without the West. The whole world had become involved in Revolusi, and the whole world was changed by it.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eyewitness testimonies, David Van Reybrouck turns this vast and complex story into an utterly gripping narrative, written with remarkable historical clarity and filled with tragedy and passion. A landmark history, Revolusi cements Indonesia's struggle for independence as one of the defining dramas of the twentieth century and entirely reframes our understanding of post-colonialism.
We Breed Lions: Confronting Canada's Troubled Hockey Culture
Rick Westhead
The allegations read like a scene out of a horror movie.
Five National Hockey League players, all of them 18 to 20-year-old Canada World Juniors at the time, were alleged to have sexually assaulted a young woman in a London, Ontario, hotel room in June 2018 over several hours. When the players learned that the alleged victim had reported the incident to the police, they allegedly coerced her to drop the complaint and colluded to make sure their stories lined up. Hockey Canada kept the details of the case out of the spotlight and came to a confidential financial settlement with the plaintiff, paid out of a secret slush fund worth millions of dollars that the organization kept on hand to settle such complaints quietly.
On May 26, 2022, TSN investigative reporter Rick Westhead broke the story surrounding the Team Canada junior players and Hockey Canada's handling of the case, immediately sending shock waves throughout all levels of the hockey world. Charges of sexual assault were made against the players; all of whom entered pleas of not guilty. Once the story went live on the TSN website, Westhead's inbox on X filled with messages from people who wanted to share their personal stories on how they had been impacted by hockey's toxic culture.
For over three years the story ignited an enormous amount of debate and discussion across the country. Even after the players were acquitted of all charges in July, 2025, the conversation about how broken the national game had become only intensified.
In We Breed Lions, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Rick Westhead does a deep-dive into the state of hockey in Canada today. He gives voice to those who have been sexually assaulted by hockey players, revealing the struggles they've had with local police officials in their efforts to seek justice. He also goes inside the dressing room to find out how attitudes of misogyny and homophobia continue to flourish, and speaks to former players who were forced to perform degrading acts of initiation in order to “be one of the guys.”
Looming large in Westhead's extraordinary reporting are the gatekeepers of the game—league officials, team owners and members of the sport's governing bodies—who are reluctant to impose change from the outside and willing to sacrifice the well-being of their players and the community for profit.
Westhead offers hope for hockey's future, profiling those individuals and organizations who are committed to educating players around issues of consent, putting an end to hazing and redefining what it means to be a man on and off the ice. Featuring a Foreword by bestselling author Stephen Brunt, We Breed Lions is must-reading for parents, players and all of those who love the game of hockey and want to see it get to a better place.
When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution, Revised Edition
Elizabeth Becker
Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker started covering Cambodia in 1973 for The Washington Post, when the country was perceived as little more than a footnote to the Vietnam War. Then, with the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 came the closing of the border and a systematic reorganization of Cambodian society. Everyone was sent from the towns and cities to the countryside, where they were forced to labor endlessly in the fields. The intelligentsia were brutally exterminated, and torture, terror, and death became routine. Ultimately, almost two million people--nearly a quarter of the population--were killed in what was one of this century's worst crimes against humanity.
When the War Was Over is Elizabeth Becker's masterful account of the Cambodian nightmare. Encompassing the era of French colonialism and the revival of Cambodian nationalism; 1950s Paris, where Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot received his political education; the killing fields of Cambodia; government chambers in Washington, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Hanoi, and Phnom Penh; and the death of Pol Pot in 1998; this is a book of epic vision and staggering power. Merging original historical research with the many voices of those who lived through the times and exclusive interviews with every Cambodian leader of the past quarter century, When the War Was Over illuminates the darkness of Cambodia with the intensity of a bolt of lightning.
Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece
Jeffrey Spier, Timothy Potts, Sara E Cole
The Thracians--a collection of tribal peoples who inhabited territories north of ancient Greece, an area that comprises present-day Bulgaria, much of Romania, and parts of Greece and Turkey--were renowned for their skill as warriors and horsemen, as well as for their wealth in precious metals. Thracians left few written records, and knowledge of their history and customs has long been dependent on brief accounts from ancient Greek authors. They appeared in Greek myth as formidable adversaries in the Trojan War, cruel kings, and followers of the ecstatic god Dionysos. Spectacular archaeological discoveries made in Thracian lands during modern times, however, have provided firsthand evidence of this remarkable culture, illuminating Thrace's interactions with Greece, Persia, and Rome.
Ancient Thrace and the Classical World reproduces more than two hundred glorious objects dating from the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC, to the end of the first century AD, when Thrace became part of the Roman Empire. Experts explore topics such as Thracian royal tombs, the Greek colonization of the Black Sea coast, Thracian religion, and more, placing Thracian culture in a broader historical context that highlights its complex relationships with the surrounding region.
This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa from November 6, 2024, to March 3, 2025.
Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia
Chiara Formichi
Chiara Formichi argues that Muslim women in Java and Sumatra, from the late 1910s to the 1950s, were central to Indonesia's progress as guardians and promoters of health and piety through gendered activities of care work. While sidelined in the Dutch colonial project of hygienic modernity, women's labor of social reproduction became increasingly visible. Women from all walks of life were called upon to fulfill domestic and motherly roles for the production and socialization of laborers, soldiers, and citizens. The medicalization of cleanliness, intersecting with multiple patriarchal orders, marginalized women's traditional influence and knowledge. However, leveraging the critical importance of infant care, cleanliness, and nutrition, women pushed against the boundaries imposed on them by the colonial and postcolonial state.
Largely absent from government archives, their words and acts are evident in vernacular magazines and visual sources drawn from official outreach, news and lifestyle media, and advertisements. Women writers rearticulated scientific mothering, nationalist maternalism, and Islamic ideals of motherhood to create a public voice through gendered care work. Domestic Nationalism proposes that as the modern Indonesian nation-state took shape capitalizing on the public function of mothering, so did homemaking become a crossroads of national and international approaches to development, blurring nonaligned self-reliance and global capitalist interests.
Maple Syrup: A Short History of Canada's Sweetest Obsession
Peter Kuitenbrouwer
From the quiet beauty of sugar maple forests to the high-tech, high-stakes world of syrup production, this book takes you on a remarkable journey into one of Canada’s most cherished traditions. Led by Peter Kuitenbrouwer, a forester with a deep appreciation for the land, this beautifully illustrated narrative uncovers the rich Indigenous heritage of maple syrup, explores its cultural significance and reveals the complex industry that sustains it today, where vast warehouses store a product so valuable it became the target of the Great Maple Syrup Heist, one of Canada’s most infamous thefts.
Blending history, culture and science in a story that stretches from eastern Canada and into the northeastern US, Maple Syrup stands as a testament to the resilience, communal joy and economic intricacies that define maple syrup, and is the perfect read for anyone who loves Canada, its heritage and the irresistible taste of spring.
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
Loung Ung
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.
Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria
Kristen Ghodsee
Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe examines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion.
Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region's state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women's embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks' new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria's Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.
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