Assault on Paradise is a highly readable, instructive, and entertaining ethnography for use as a supplement in introductory anthropology courses. The text chronicles the rapid social and economic change in Arembepe, a Brazilian coastal fishing village, where the author has conducted anthropological fieldwork from 1962 to the present. This revision brings the research up to date, covering events that have occurred in this community through the present and focusing primarily on the impact of globalization, technology, and mass media. The ethnography can be used on its own, or in conjunction with any introductory anthropology text, but works particularly well with Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Fourth Edition (2005), also by Conrad Kottak.

Conrad Phillip Kottak (A.B. Columbia, 1963; Ph.D. Columbia, 1966) is the Julian H. Steward Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1968. He served as Anthropology Department chair from 1996 to 2006. In 1991 he was honored for his teaching by the University and the state of Michigan. In 1992 he received an excellence in teaching award from the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts of the University of Michigan. In 1999 the America Anthropological Association awarded Professor Kottak the AAA/Mayfield Award for Excellence in the Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology.

Professor Kottak has done ethnographic fieldwork in cultural anthropology in Brazil (since 1962), Madagascar (since 1966), and the United States. Conrad Kottak's articles have appeared in academic journals including American Anthropologist, Journal of Anthropological Research, American Ethnologist, Ethnology, Human Organization, and Luso-Brazilian Review. He has also written for more popular journals, including Transaction/SOCIETY, Natural History, Psychology Today, and General Anthropology.

In recent research projects, Kottak and his colleagues have investigated the emergence of ecological awareness in Brazil, the social context of deforestation in Madagascar, and popular participation in economic development planning in northeastern Brazil.

Recently, Kottak was inducted to The National Academy of Sciences. This is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare.