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Kingdom Under Glass
Jay Kirk
A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Great Animals
Henry Holt & Company
November 2010
On Sale: October 26, 2010
400 pages ISBN: 080509282X EAN: 9780805092820 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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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