Arguing that these disciplines are better learned from original papers than from a textbook, even if such a textbook existed, Littlewood and Dein (anthropology and psychiatry, U. College London) compile 16 papers, some well known and some not, but all they consider either canonical or representative. They have preferred classic ethnographic and readable selections to drier critical synopsis typical of much recent work. They provide commentary on each text with suggestions on later research and further reading, and introduce the whole with a short historical overview. They recommend that readers with no background in anthropology have a short dictionary of the field's terms or a general introduction to hand, and likewise those new to psychiatry, a small medical student's textbook on the field.