This is a book on the early years of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, told in triple biography of three of its foundational persons: Henry Fairfield Osborn, Carl Akeley, & Roy Chapman Andrews: the administrator, the taxidermist, and the explorer, though all titles are a loose fit.

This is the story of the museum at its most museum-y, where what work the people are doing for the museum is its most in alignment with the P-public's view of the role of museums and who works there, down to one of them having a fear of snakes. All of them live film-worthy lives, including Akeley's deconstructed trope version of Bringing Up Baby. My skepticism strained at some of the stories. It is often situations where it does not seem like we have much verifiable information, and the author prints the legend, usually, but the wilder stories feel in accord with the more established ones. Besides, the rule of cool wins out here.

Maybe the most novel bit to me was the degree to which it seemed like these people were aware of the problems that would become evident in their methods later on. It is right to call these men conservationists. The moral arc of Akeley ends up somewhere in concordance with contemporary environmentalism. But their motivations often arose out of the advocacy of T.R. Roosevelt or John Muir, focused on the notion of a "frontier," full of Muscular Christianity or something that passes for it in dim light. And their methods often are destroying the town to save it sort of paradox: let's kill these animals before C-Civilization does.

The author shows how there is a feedback loop - again, quite consciously - between racist ideas and and how the people here were lauded. This wasn't any of that myopia-inducing Jewish science; this was natural history, and not only did the results of the work support the racist superstructure but the work itself was considered proof of racism's accuracy. The act of the research itself in its boy's own adventure qualities was self-proving of the qualities that made the whites superior. Wilderness preservation was positive eugenics in creating places where white people could experience what made them great.

The book then is something of a mea culpa on the part of the author, working in the AMNH through the transition into modernity, starting work when hunting was considered a job skill and continuing working in museums into today, where something like that is considered antithetical to the organization's purpose. And this is, maybe, where things get a little off.

Osborn in particular was a racist and arch-eugenicist. His Age of Man exhibit in particular is racist, my love of Charles Knight notwithstanding, and beyond that works to establish tropes about science and evolution that stick with us today, practically divorced from racism, yet still creating problems. Outside of being morally incorrect, he was factually wrong, and refused to adjust his beliefs in light of better data.

And yet, while you do not need to hand it to Osborn, I felt that the book was unfair. In specific, because it is not a biography of Osborn, it is left to treat Osborn's ideas as sui generis in the interest of room, which I have mixed feelings towards. It is the third opinion paradox in work, where the question is one that has more texture than the simple answer, but the simple answer is still correct.

I am uncertain whether the author thought it necessary to hedge against hagiography or whether an editor felt that this was the sexy way to move copies. Or provoke controversy, since the current administration's fashionable eugenics and war on history is such that I assume this book will get pilloried by the Wrongest amongst us. This is despite the book itself serving up some of that complexity: the stuff these people did is often cool and the ugliness is complicated by their own complexity as people.

So it is the sort of book that I felt lacking in detail for its exploration of scientific racism as mirrored in the AMNH, and left me wanting to read more about the Ages of Man exhibit and similar in specific of its context, but that I still liked and strongly recommend for its captivating storytelling and good writing style.

My thanks to the author, Darrin Lunde, for writing the book, and to the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, for making the ARC available to me.