The History Department Announces Publication of New Book from Dr. Paul Brinkman

Congratulations to Dr. Paul Brinkman for the release of his new book, Now is the Time to Collect: Daniel Giraud Elliot, Carl Akeley, and the Field Museum African Expedition of 1896 (Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press, 2024).

Brinkman’s book “tells the fascinating story of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History’s zoological expedition to Africa in 1896, the source of many of the museum’s foundational collections and an astounding episode in nineteenth-century science. After the well-publicized extinction of the dodo and Carolina parakeet and the collapse of the American bison population, late nineteenth-century naturalists expected many more vulnerable species to die out with spread of Western-style industrialization. This triggered a race to collect rare species of animals expected soon to be lost forever.

Established in 1893, Chicago’s ambitious Field Museum aimed to become a global center of study. Zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot persuaded museum patrons to fund an immediate expedition to British Somaliland (contemporary Somalia). There, his team hunted and killed hundreds of animals for the growing collection. On the trip was groundbreaking taxonomist Carl Akeley. Back in Chicago, Akeley created captivating lifelike dioramas of rare animal groups that enhanced the museum’s fame and remain popular to this day.”

Dr. Brinkman is an adjunct associate professor and head of the Science Research Lab and curator of Special Collections at the Environmental Research Laboratory.