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Description edit
The story of bold adventurers who risked death to discover strange life forms in the farthest corners of planet Earth. Beginning with Linnaeus, a colorful band of explorers made it their mission to travel to the most perilous corners of the planet and bring back astonishing new life forms.... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
People edit
- Charles Darwin: Add a description of this character.
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- Carl Linnaeus
- George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Baffon
- John James Audubon
- Henry Walter Bates
- Georges Cuvier
- Pere Armand David
- Paul Du Chaillu
- Philip Henry Gosse
- John E. Gray
- John Hunter
- Thomas Jefferson
- Mary H. Kingsley
- Stephen Harriman Long: Major in the US Army
- Charles Lyell
- Patrick Manson
- Samuel G. Morton
- Richard Owen
- Charles Wilson Peale
- Constantine Rafinesque
- Walter Rothschild
- Rumphius
- Thomas S. Savage: Reverend, missionary and naturalist
- Thomas Say
- Charles Waterton
First Sentence edit
In November 1774, a cask of rum arrived in London, spiked with four dead electric eels, the largest of them almost 4 feet long and up to 14 inches around.
Table of Contents edit
Introduction: Strange Things, Strange Lands
1. That Great Beast of a Town
2. Finding the Thread
3. Collecting and Conquest
4. Mad about Shells
5. Extinct
6. The Rising
7. The River Rolling Westward
8. "If they lost their skalps"
9. The Burden of Specimens
10. Arsenic and immortality
11. "Am I not a man and a brother?"
12. Craniological longings
13. "A fool to nature"
14. The World Turned Upside Down
15. A Primate Named Savage
16. "Species men"
17. "Labourer in the field"
18. The Slow Power of Natural Forces
19. The Gorilla War
20. Big Noses and Short Tea-Drinkers
21. Industrial-Scale Natural History
22. "The blessing of a good skirt"
23. The Beast in the Mosquito
24. "Why not try the experiment?"
Epilogue: The New Age of Discovery
Necrology
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Index
Series & Lists edit
Authors & Contributors edit
- Richard Conniff (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-06854-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-06854-2
Page Count: 464
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: QH267 C66 2011
- Dewey: 508.09'033
Subjects edit
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