| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 226 words from this article are provided below; about 448 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Robert E. Kohler. All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850–1950. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 2006. Pp. xiii, 363. $35.00.

How did American naturalists acquire their knowledge of the tremendous diversity of the world's species? This question lies at the heart of Robert E. Kohler's comprehensive new study. To answer his query, Kohler ranges far beyond the realm of laboratories and scientists to consider the rather eccentric cast of characters who engaged in the field collection of animal specimens at the turn of the last century. While much of this collecting was conducted under the auspices of natural history museums and government agencies such as the U.S. Biological Survey, many participants were enthusiastic amateurs with little formal training. For such folks, collecting merged recreation with personal improvement, and their behavior speaks to the enormous pull that the desire for a more authentic encounter with nature exercised on American culture. Consider, for example, "Ma" Latham, who lived on Florida's Atlantic coast in the late 1800s. Not only did Latham comb the beaches near her family's home for interesting animal specimens to send to natural history museums, she opened her house free of charge to passing naturalists, hoping, in the words of the nineteenth-century ornithologist Frank Chapman, "to make her house a resort for scientific people" (p. 170).

. . .

There are about 448 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.