Paradigms of the Past: The Story of Missouri Archaeology, by Michael J. O'Brien, 1995. Columbia: University of Missouri Press

A volume this massive (562 pages) contains far more substance than any short review can hope to do justice. One can, however, highlight major themes and directions of the tome. I see significant contributions in three areas: (i) the history of the development of archaeological thinking using Missouri as a foil; (ii) some autobio­graphical exegesis of the development of the author's understanding of archaeology; and (iii) a strongly stated theoretical argument, repeated throughout the volume, that a variety of neo-functionalism espoused by Robert Dunnell, and now practiced by O'Brien and a handful of his Ph.D. students, is the only scientific archaeology extant.