@SerenityNigh
I’ve listed a lot of books. I’ve organized the books by anthropological subdiscipline, which is how we teach anthropology in the US. The subdisciplines are usually cultural, biological, archaeology, and linguistic—in the UK, “cultural anthropology” is usually called “social anthropology” and “biological anthropology” is often shunted into zoology or archaeology, the latter of which is usually a whole separate department.
A didactic note on “cultural anthropology” Historically, it used to be specifically concerned with remote societies and exotic customs; then it turned to trying to develop overarching theories of society. In the last 50 years or so, the discipline has turned inward on itself. It no longer seeks grand theories of society or makes any attempt to seek a general pattern of social organization; rather it is more concerned with critical theory—reanalyses of established theories to show how they are culturally biased; postmodernism—a turning inward on prior anthropological works themselves to show how they are subtlety suffused with biases pertaining to power relationships: gender, race, authority, etc.; and social justice—where a lot of current anthropological work is focusing on worker rights, migration and mobility, faults in capitalism (you’ll see the word neoliberalism used negatively in such critiques), prison anthropology, etc. Along with this turn to critical theory, postmodernism, and social justice, the topics have gotten much more narrow and, overall, the writing has gotten much more verbose and dense.
I think a few of these you (or me? or someone?) has already mentioned in the book thread. And I don’t know enough about linguistic anthropology to list current books in this subdiscipline but some of the book in the biological anthropology section deal with language evolution.
Archaeology:
1491 (Mann): A readable history about the civilizations/cultures of the Americas before Colombus. Really liked this one.
1493 (Mann): The sequel to the above, about just after incrusted western contact, and the implication of trade/cultural diffusion of foods, ideas, pests, diseases, etc., between east, Americas, and west.
Horse, Wheel, and Language (Anthony): Traces the origin of a group of people responsible for speaking proto- Indo-European language and how they diffused from central Asia outward, shaping a huge amount of languages.
Europe between the Oceans (Cunliffe): a very readable history of Europe in the last 10,000 years.
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond): A readable but likely wrong book on “geographic determinism”—arguing what chunk of land you live helped to influenced what cultural innovations/discoveries you make.
Skull wars (Thomas): Not so much a grand theory book, rather a look a the relationship between archaeologists in the US and Native Americans. Interesting history is presented here.
Cultural anthropology: (I can't vouch for the readability of all these below...)
Debt: The first 5000 years (Graeber): I have only flipped through this book and it seems well done. Graeber is very much an anti-capitalist and this is a history of an important phenomenon in economics—though debt, as Graeber argues, precedes the invention of money (he was also one of my professors back in the day)
Why I am not a scientist (Marks): A cultural critique of science and how its conducted. Well written (the author was one of my professors back in the day)
Culture on Tour (Bruner): a look at how cultures represent themselves and are represented, particularly with respect to the tourism industry.
Alien Ocean (Helreich): An anthropological analysis of marine biological research. Innovative for sure, not so sure about its readability. The author is at MIT, which is affiliated with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (a place where I spent a few years as a researcher).
Coming of age in New Jersey (Moffat): a now-dated book, which is an ethnography of college dorm life. I loved it when I read it about 20 years ago. Also see “My freshman year” in the same genre.
Parallel Worlds (Gottlieb/Graham): an anthropologist and her fiction-writer husband jointly write about the challenges of fitting into and making sense of the Beng society in W. Africa.
Biological anthropology:
Monkey Luv, Essays on our lives as animals (Sapolsky): Sapolsky is a gifted writer and these are great essays.
Mothers and Others (Hrdy): this is a continuation of her early arguments about how shifts in child-rearing led to the evolution of major traits that define us, notably high levels of cooperation even with strangers. She is great writer and her previous books are also good.
The alternative introduction to biological anthropology (Marks): We use this as an introductory textbook in our biological anthropology classes. Gives a very good overview of the field and is highly readable.
Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of language (Dunbar): an interesting hypothesis about the origins of language as it arose from nonhuman primates obsession with grooming.
How to think like a Neandertal (Wynn/Coolidge): a speculative but fun look into Neandertal life and human behavior in general. I use this in my human evolution course and students like it.
The Story of the Human Body (Lieberman): Great and readable account of how our body has changed over millions of years; it explores big themes in humanity particular as it pertains to disease/ailments.
Neanderthal Man, In search of lost genomes (Paabo): written by the guru of ancient DNA analysis, tells about the history of sequencing the neandertal genome. Very readable.
The Gap (Suddendorf): a good account of what separates us from other primates…up to date, readable.
Not sure if this will help...
