Carl Akeley: Africa's Collector, Africa's Savior

Carl Akeley's career as a wildlife sculptor and pioneer museum taxidermist coincided wth the turn-of-the-century wave of romanticism about ``the Dark Continent'' and its wildlife. Indeed, millions of Americans got their first impressions of Africa's wildlife from Ackeley dioramas in the Field Museum in Chicago and Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History. In his day, he moved in a charmed circle of inventors, scientists and explorers that included George Eastman, Teddy Roosevelt and Roy Chapman Andrews. This biography takes the full measure of his perfectionism as a curator, his passion for invention, his two eccentric marriages and breathtaking African safari adventures. Bodry-Sanders, herself a staff member of the AMNH, charges Akeley (1864-1926) with an explictly personal attraction, which her style sustains and magnifies. (May)