Beginning in 1925 mead sent family and friends these letters from the field "to make a little more real for them" the exotic worlds that absorbed her. Enhanced by more than 100 photographs these intelligent, vivid, frequently funny, and sometimes poetic letters help us share with Mead "the unique, but also cumulative, experience of immersing oneself in the on-going life of another people...attempting to understand mentally and physically this other version of reality".