Book excerpt: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard's classic writings on the Nuer of southern Sudan have made them one of the most famous peoples in ethnographic literature. When the writings were first published half a century ago, they created a new agenda for social anthropology. Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer is the second of his trilogy on the society and culture of this pastoral people. It vividly portrays the experience of growing up in a Nuer community, describing daily life, marriage, sex, death, and birth. It also makes clear the essential difference between the discourse of political association and that of kinship, and shows the part played by the kinship system in Nuer society as a whole. Now published for the first time in paperback, this edition has a substantial introduction by Wendy James in which she assesses the importance of Evans-Pritchard's work and places it in the context of recent developments in social anthropology.