During her life Margaret Mead represented many things to the American public; sage, scientist, noncomformist, crusader for world peace & archetypal grandmother. 

An enduring cultural icon, she came to symbolize a new kind of woman, one who successfully combined marriage & motherhood with a career & scholarship with a singular concern for its role in the lives of ordinary people. 

Even today, when memoirs of successful women scientists & scholars remain scarce, Blackberry Winter, 1st published in '72, provides a rare glimpse of a pioneering woman's formative journey. 

In her chapters "On Being a Granddaughter" & "The Pattern My Family Made Me," Mead examines the wisdom she gained from her maternal grandmother as well as the inheritance she received from her ancestors, & how her upbringing fueled her desire for a fulfilling career that would reflect her own emerging values. 

We are treated to captivating portraits of bohemian life in NYC in the '20s; her early days at the American Museum of Natural History, where she met her longtime mentor, Franz Boas, & friend, Ruth Benedict; & 1st field trip to study adolescent girls in Samoa. 

Near the book's end, in "On Being a Grandmother," she reflects on the legacy she leaves her descendants, indeed, all of humanity. 

This autobiography, reissued for a new generation of readers, will appeal to any eager to discover a woman of our century who made her way in a world seldom hospitable to the dreams & accomplishments of women.