Dr. Anna Wierzbicka is Professor of Linguistics at the Australian National University. She has lectured extensively at universities in Europe, America, and Japan, and is the author of many books, including Semantics: Primes and Universals (OUP, 1996) and Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Human-Specific Configurations (OUP, 1992).

For anyone new to the cultures discussed, Wierzbicka's work provides a useful starting point ... anyone with an interest in the cultures Wierzbicka discusses would find this book a fascinating first step ... provides a variety of goodies, and the accumulated data will surely send readers' minds rolling in interesting directions.