Summer Reading Recap, Non-Fiction Edition

More summer reading from Lindi. This time it's non-fiction! I know -- that's rare for me, but it does happen from time to time that I pick up a book from the numbered part of the library. Sometimes I even read a few chapters.

But... but... but... I actually read two this summer, start to finish! Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History, by Stephen Christopher Quinn, and Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion, by Madeleine B. Stern and Leona Rostenberg.

Quinn seduced me with his coffee table book full of gorgeous photos -- historical shots of people and workshops, full color photographs of landscapes and dioramas, and frankly who isn't pulled in by the magic of a diorama? So, yes, I was intrigued by the subject and figured something with that many pictures would be fun to thumb through. But captions with the recurring name of Carl Akeley piqued my interest. On one page he's bandaged after having been mauled by a leopard, on another it's after an elephant crushes his lungs. I had to read the book to find out who this guy is and why he's going back to Africa over and over again? Along the way I found out Akeley pretty much single handedly invented modern dioramas and perfected taxidermy. I found out that the paintings on those curved backdrops are seriously distorted up close and that pretty much everything in the displays was collected in the field and preserved through a variety of methods. I found out that the museum dioramas of the late 19th century were instrumental for preserving wildlife habitats around the world. Turns out Windows on Nature is a fascinating book!

One reason Carl Akeley was interesting to me was his lack of formal education. He grew up on a farm and loved the outdoors. He apprenticed with a taxidermist which led him to his life's work -- preserving animal specimens in the service of educating the public. His work in natural history museums and in establishing wildlife preserves was a clear case of following his passion to find a career. Stern and Rostenberg recount their similar paths. Unlike Akeley, they went to high school and college and, in fact, Rostenberg continued on through graduate school. But their careers, while bolstered because of their educational background, really came about outside the "usual" trajectories. Or should I say usual for men?

Stern taught high school English for many years, and Rostenberg toiled for her Ph.D at Columbia, only to have her completed dissertation rejected by her advisor who had wanted her to research something else. It was right after World War II. She got a job with a Viennese rare book dealer who had fled the Nazis and set up shop in New York. On their own time, Stern and Rostenberg continued to research their passions -- Stern's for 19th century womens' lives and Rostenberg's for early print literature. Stern wrote and published important biographies, including one of Louisa May Alcott, and in fact researching that book uncovered Alcott's pseudonym. Scholars had long believed Alcott wrote the kind of sensationalist stories that Jo March does in Little Women, but no one had a clue until Rostenberg found a reference to "A.M. Barnard" with other notations of payment for writing.

Meanwhile Rostenberg continued collecting and researching her beloved early print literature, ultimately opening her own rare books business. Both women regularly published their findings in literary and trade journals with the occasional biography from Stern. That they were discouraged from the usual academic research positions mattered not. They have never stopped questioning, searching, learning and sharing through their writing, and Old Books, Rare Friends is but one example of their perseverance and generosity.