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Museum Men and the Rise of Scientific Racism
by Darrin Lunde
An eye-opening look into the founding of the American Museum of Natural History and its original racial underpinnings.
From 1908 to 1933, the American Museum of Natural History launched more scientific field expeditions than at any other time in its existence. Sponsoring lavish trips to Africa and Central Asia, the museum filled its halls with artifacts and an aura of adventure, supported by some of New York City's most prominent men, including Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. All the while, the museum's then president, Henry Fairfield Osborn, attempted to use his adventurers' expeditions to fulfill a personal agenda: to propagate his belief in racial hierarchy.
Palace of Deception uncovers the complicated legacy of three iconic figures of the American Museum: the preeminent explorer Roy Chapman Andrews; Carl Akeley, the pioneering taxidermist who created so many of the museum's most memorable exhibits; and Osborn, the museum's president, who was once considered an authority on everything from paleontology and evolution to race and eugenics. From Andrews's ambitions searching for fossils in the Gobi Desert to the construction of Akeley's artistic masterpiece, the Hall of African Mammals, Darrin Lunde tells the story of the American's Museum foundational years. Lunde also shows how the achievements of the museum's adventurers were used to introduce residents of New York to a version of the natural world―one full of strict natural laws and categories―endorsed by the museum's powerful leader.
Based on extensive diaries, letters, journals, and the author's own experiences leading modern-day expeditions to several of the same places, Palace of Deception. re-creates some of the most celebrated, globe-trotting journeys from natural history's heyday. It also traces the larger, racially infused milieu that underwrote the golden age of exploration, uncovering the simmering anxieties about race behind the era's greatest adventures. It is a legacy that still haunts natural history institutions today.
"A colorful, authoritative history … Even as he exposes the 'exploitative ideas and practices' that pervaded the museum's early days, Lunde acknowledges too the lasting treasure that shines as these men's legacy." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The rise of scientific racism takes on a new dimension in Lunde's stunning investigation into the American Museum of Natural History and its complicated origins." ―The Millions
"With electrifying prose and a riveting sense of purpose, Darrin Lunde pulls back the curtain on our country's natural history institutions, revealing a legacy of exploitive ideas and practices. What he has found is at turns maddening, inspiring, and deeply moving. A modern masterpiece of nonfiction, Palace of Deception shakes the foundations of our beloved scientific museums, and the men who led them, while shining a light on the path forward." ―Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls
"An epic, globe-trotting adventure full of fascinating characters, and exotic and dangerous locales." ―Bill Schutt, author of Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History
"Darrin Lunde is a natural storyteller. These tales of derring-do by 'museum men' a century ago are also an occasion for reflection on the larger social purposes that natural history museums were meant to serve, not all of which were benign. Lunde underlines for us that it took later generations of museum professionals, among them the American Museum of Natural History anthropologist Margaret Mead, to replace the palace of deception with a theater of verity." ―Ross MacPhee, author of End of the Megafauna
This information about Palace of Deception was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Darrin Lunde is the mammal collection manager at the National Museum of Natural History. Previously, he worked at the American Museum of Natural History, where he led numerous field expeditions throughout the world. He lives in Maryland with his family.
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