Books > History > American history
|
Buy Now
Assembling the Dinosaur - Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R687
Discovery Miles 6 870
You Save: R67
(9%)
|
|
Assembling the Dinosaur - Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle (Hardcover)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
|
A lively account of how dinosaurs became a symbol of American power
and prosperity and gripped the popular imagination during the
Gilded Age, when their fossil remains were collected and displayed
in museums financed by North America's wealthiest business tycoons.
Although dinosaur fossils were first found in England, a series of
dramatic discoveries during the late 1800s turned North America
into a world center for vertebrate paleontology. At the same time,
the United States emerged as the world's largest industrial
economy, and creatures like Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus, and
Triceratops became emblems of American capitalism. Large, fierce,
and spectacular, American dinosaurs dominated the popular
imagination, making front-page headlines and appearing in feature
films. Assembling the Dinosaur follows dinosaur fossils from the
field to the museum and into the commercial culture of North
America's Gilded Age. Business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie and J.
P. Morgan made common cause with vertebrate paleontologists to
capitalize on the widespread appeal of dinosaurs, using them to
project American exceptionalism back into prehistory. Learning from
the show-stopping techniques of P. T. Barnum, museums exhibited
dinosaurs to attract, entertain, and educate the public. By
assembling the skeletons of dinosaurs into eye-catching displays,
wealthy industrialists sought to cement their own reputations as
generous benefactors of science, showing that modern capitalism
could produce public goods in addition to profits. Behind the
scenes, museums adopted corporate management practices to control
the movement of dinosaur bones, restricting their circulation to
influence their meaning and value in popular culture. Tracing the
entwined relationship of dinosaurs, capitalism, and culture during
the Gilded Age, Lukas Rieppel reveals the outsized role these giant
reptiles played during one of the most consequential periods in
American history.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.