What is thinking but the courage to work alone developing concepts that are lasting because they grow out of a living relationship to a subject matter. Academic fashions come and go while the thought of the social anthropologist George Becker remains the contemporary of the future. Here assembled by his student and friend, the psychiatrist Jon Lewis, some of the essential papers unpublished in Beckers lifetime. The range is great: from Female Delinquency to Jonestown. The depth is compelling. The critique of other thinkers in the field are incisive. And a final virtue: the style is clear, without the need for scholarly obfuscations. Walter A Davis, Professor of English Emeritus, Ohio State University. Author of Deaths Dream Kingdom, Deracination and Inwardness and Existence.