"In Praise of the Ancestors will be of immense value to historians, anthropologists, folklorists, and anyone striving to understand oral tradition as history, the cultural logics underpinning succession, and the constitution of personhood itself."—Kirstin C. Erickson, Journal of Folklore Research Reviews

"What's in a name? In this concise and well-arranged comparative history, Susan Elizabeth Ramírez offers an arresting answer regarding the nature of historical consciousness in societies without writing."—Christopher Heaney, Hispanic American Historical Review

«“This book expresses a fresh and durably important answer to questions about how ‘precapitalist’ states and federations envisioned time and change. Ethnographers on four continents have repeatedly intuited that kingdoms and federations purposely made history in a patterned way. But on what pattern, and why? This book is a big deal. It’s short, original, engrossing, and brightly lit up with cross-cultural insight.”—Frank Salomon, John V. Murra Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and past president of the American Society for Ethnohistory»