Name: Capturing Kahanamoku: How a Surfing Legend and a Scientific Obsession Redefined Race and Culture - Michael Rossi
Brand: Michael Rossi
Price: 158.72 RON
Availability: InStock

Descriere & specificații

nThe fascinating untold story of one scientist's pursuit of a legendary surfer in his quest to define human nature, written with the compelling drama and narrative insight of Why Fish Don't Exist and The Lost City of Z. n n Deep in the archives of New York's American Museum of Natural History sits a wardrobe filled with fifty plaster casts of human heads and faces that are a century old. How they came to be is the story of one of the most consequential, and yet least-known, encounters in the history of science. n nIn 1920, the museum's director Henry Fairfield Osborn traveled to Hawaii to learn the ancient South Pacific tradition of surfing. His teacher was Duke Kahanamoku, a famous surf-rider and budding movie star. For Osborn, a fervent eugenicist, Kahanamoku was a maddening paradox: physically perfect, yet belonging to an imperfect race.n nUpon his return to New York, Osborn's fixation grew. He dispatched young scientist Louis Sullivan to Honolulu to measure, photograph, and cast in plaster Kahanamoku and other Hawaiian people. The study touched off a series of events that forever changed how we think about race, culture, science, and the essence of humanity. n nIn Capturing Kahanamoku, historian Michael Rossi draws on archival research and firsthand interviews to weave together a truly fascinating cultural history that is an absorbing account of obsession, a cautionary tale about the subjectivity of science, a warning of the pernicious and lasting impact of eugenics, a me