With a Foreword by Wendy Doniger. In this expanded collection of five lectures originally delivered on the Canadian radio series "Ideas," Lévi-Strauss offers the insights of a lifetime spent interpreting myths and trying to discover their significance for human understanding.

"Myth and Meaning touches upon all of Lévi-Strauss's great methodological paradoxes: the parallel tensions between myth and science, myth and history, myth and music, and "primitive" and "civilized"....The clarity and directness with which Lévi-Strauss explores these questions in Myth and Meaning is unprecedented."--Wendy Doniger, The University of Chicago, from the Foreword

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS was a leading social anthropologist and the author of Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Tristes Tropiques, Totemism, The Savage Mind, The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, and Structural Anthropology. Born in 1908, he was revered as the father of modern anthropology. He died in Paris in 2009.

View titles by Claude Levi-Strauss

About

With a Foreword by Wendy Doniger. In this expanded collection of five lectures originally delivered on the Canadian radio series "Ideas," Lévi-Strauss offers the insights of a lifetime spent interpreting myths and trying to discover their significance for human understanding.

"Myth and Meaning touches upon all of Lévi-Strauss's great methodological paradoxes: the parallel tensions between myth and science, myth and history, myth and music, and "primitive" and "civilized"....The clarity and directness with which Lévi-Strauss explores these questions in Myth and Meaning is unprecedented."--Wendy Doniger, The University of Chicago, from the Foreword

Author

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS was a leading social anthropologist and the author of Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Tristes Tropiques, Totemism, The Savage Mind, The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, and Structural Anthropology. Born in 1908, he was revered as the father of modern anthropology. He died in Paris in 2009.

View titles by Claude Levi-Strauss

Three Penguin Random House Authors Win Pulitzer Prizes

On Monday, May 5, three Penguin Random House authors were honored with a Pulitzer Prize. Established in 1917, the Pulitzer Prizes are the most prestigious awards in American letters. To date, PRH has 143 Pulitzer Prize winners, including William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Josh Steinbeck, Ron Chernow, Anne Applebaum, Colson Whitehead, and many more. Take a look at our 2025 Pulitzer Prize

Read more

Books for LGBTQIA+ Pride Month

In June we celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual + (LGBTQIA+) Pride Month, which honors the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. Pride Month is a time to both celebrate the accomplishments of those in the LGBTQ+ community and recognize the ongoing struggles faced by many across the world who wish to live

Read more