Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was born in Chicago but lived in California for most of his life. He went to college at Berkeley for a year, ran a record store and had his own classical-music show on a local radio station. He published his first short story, 'Beyond Lies the Wub' in 1952. Among his many fine novels are The Man in the High Castle, Time Out of Joint, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.
Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail is one of the most nuanced, sophisticated, and ethnographically rigorous works on the process of racial formation available, stretching the analysis of 'race' well beyond the by now familiar somatic and political points of reference and theoretical debates. It is also an important and original contribution to our understanding of the spatial constitution of subjectivity and the African diaspora in a fascinating and little-researched ethnographic location. - Steven Gregory, Columbia University, author of Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community; This eloquently written work engages with a variety of issues encompassing not just the discipline of anthropology but also sociology, race and ethnic studies, and black history. - Diane Frost, University of Liverpool, author of Work and Community among West African Migrant Workers since the Nineteenth Century