What does it mean to live in Britain and to be ‘British’, and is an anthropology of Britain even a legitimate undertaking? Ranging across subjects as diverse as achieving collective identity on the Isle of Man, the London dance scene, leisure and change in a post-mining mining town, and Armenian and other diasporas, this volume of 15 essays establishes that an anthropology of Britain can set excellent standards of subtle ethnography and complex analysis.

Anthropologists have traditionally viewed a coupling of aggression and predation as the evolutionary milestone that brought about ambush hunting approximately two million years ago. But Rough and Tumble challenges this view, since aggressive attack was a hopeless tactic for humans who were smaller and slower-footed than their prey. The author uses fossils, archaeological evidence and studies of humans and other primates to argue that it was the advent of new hunting technologies that allowed humans to stalk and kill large game.

A professor of geography at UCLA, Jared Diamond looks back to humans' former lifestyle through his own fieldwork in traditional societies that still exist or were recently in existence, such as the highland peoples of New Guinea, Andaman Islanders, African Hadza and North American Inuit. Diamond highlights the many crucial lessons to be gleaned from 'primitive' societies, pointing to life decisions that may help us live longer, healthier lives, enjoy old age, and raise self-confident children.