This large illustrated study treats gesture as a kind of unofficial language: culturally transmitted, regionally variable and often far less universal than its users imagine.

Based on fieldwork across twenty-five countries and forty locations, it maps twenty familiar signals—including the horn sign, eyelid pull, hand purse, chin flick and various versions of the V-sign—asking where each gesture appears, what it communicates and how its meaning changes as it crosses borders. 

Published in 1979, the book belongs to the expansive popular anthropology associated with Desmond Morris: systematic, visually compelling and confident enough to occasionally outrun what later scholarship would permit. Its real pleasure lies in the maps, photographs and dense taxonomy of ordinary bodily acts. A gesture that signifies alertness in one place may become insult, protection, sexual mockery or nonsense elsewhere. The result is both a reference work and a period document of pre-digital cross-cultural research—ideal for readers interested in semiotics, anthropology, visual culture and investigators of social codes.

Book Club Associates hardback with dust jacket, 1979, published by arrangement with Jonathan Cape. Very good condition with light rubbing and minor edge wear to the jacket.