This book may be the most ambitious and broad-ranging analysis of Canadian Inuit culture and society undertaken by a single author since before the Second World War. In no small way, it is an attempt to construct a" Grand Unifying Theory" of Central Eskimo social structure and organization that draws from, and also reflects upon, Inuit ethnology, prehistory, linguistics, and mythology in ways that are thought-provoking and frequently breathtaking. I certainly cannot remember another work that has prompted me to reread Lewis Henry Morgan on kinship and to pour over Thule harpoon types! Although the author organizes Inuit, Whalers, and Cultural Persistence into four sections, one can parsimoniously break it down into three. By my reckoning, the first section gives an overview of Inuit social organization, examines Cumberland Sound Inuit society, essentially from the Thule period to the government era, and then critically analyses the social structure and organization of the various groups in the region. Altogether, this is a formidable task, as the denseness of the chapter on Cumberland Sound kin and local groups demonstrates. An important aspect of this section is that Stevenson sees Cumberland Sound (or at least its head) as having been occupied into this century by no less than two distinct Inuit societies, distinguishable on the basis of their adherence to one of Damas's (1963) behavioural directives: either nalartuk (respect-obedience) or ungayuk (affection-solidarity). Since researchers have generally seen these directives as primarily governing Inuit interpersonal relations within and between generations (see Damas, 1963: 48-51: Nooter, 1976), Stevenson's application of these directives to analyse intersocietal differences has interesting theoretical implications. This section also presents important original data related to the demography and structure of Cumberland Sound groupings. The second section (again by my schema) launches into a revisionist examination of the sociocultural and, ultimately, the prehistory and socio-territorial aspects of the Iglulik, the Netsilik, and the Copper Eskimos--the three groups classically regarded as comprising the Central Arctic Inuit.