Kingdom Under GlassKingdom Under Glass
An account of the life of the famed explorer and taxidermist assesses his influence on American views about natural-world conservation, covering his dangerous pursuits of wildlife for his dioramas.
During The Golden Age Of Safaris In The Early twentieth century, one man set out to preserve Africa's great beasts. In this epic account of an extraordinary life lived during remarkable times, award-winning journalist Jay Kirk follows the adventures of the brooding genius who revolutionized taxidermy and created the famed Akeley Hall of African Mammals we visit today at New York's Museum of Natural History.
The Gilded Age was drawing to a close, and with it came the realization that men may have hunted certain species into oblivion. Renowned taxidermist Carl Akeley and his young wife, Mickie, joined the hunters rushing to Africa to stalk what many considered to be the last of the great safari animals. Over the course of three decades, Carl and Mickie traveled across the brutal deserts of Somaliland, to the volcanic peaks of the Congo and the great savannahs of British East Africa, hunting down the beasts that would fill their painstakingly detailed ark back in New York City. Each expedition was more harrowing than the last. On one, Carl famously strangled a leopard with his bare hands. In 1909, after a hunt with Teddy Roosevelt, a bull elephant attacked Carl high on Mount Kenya, breaking several ribs and leaving him for dead. Still, Carl worked obsessively to complete his vision. Not until he had lost the love of his life did he have the crucial epiphany that grants his story a particularly poignant and lasting resonance.
In this vivid tale of art, science, courage, and romance, Jay Kirk illuminates a fateful turning point when Americans had to decide whether to save nature, destroy it, or just stare at it under glass. The result of years of intense research, this is a riveting history of a lost legend that reads like a novel.
A sweeping historical narrative of the life of Carl Akeley, the famed explorer and taxidermist who changed the way Americans viewed the conservation of the natural world
During the golden age of safaris in the early twentieth century, one man set out to preserve Africa's great beasts. In this epic account of an extraordinary life lived during remarkable times, Jay Kirk follows the adventures of the brooding genius who revolutionized taxidermy and created the famed African Hall we visit today at New York's Museum of Natural History. The Gilded Age was drawing to a close, and with it came the realization that men may have hunted certain species into oblivion. Renowned taxidermist Carl Akeley joined the hunters rushing to Africa, where he risked death time and again as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era such as Theodore Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum. In a tale of art, science, courage, and romance, Jay Kirk resurrects a legend and illuminates a fateful turning point when Americans had to decide whether to save nature, to destroy it, or to just stare at it under glass.
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- New York : Henry Holt and Co., 2010/10/26
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