Palace of Deception
Museum Men and the Rise of Scientific Racism
by Darrin Lunde
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Pub Date 4 Nov 2025 | Archive Date 31 Oct 2025
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Description
An eye-opening look into the founding of the American Museum of Natural History and its original racial underpinnings
From 1908 to 1933, the American Museum of Natural History launched more scientific field expeditions than at any other time in its existence. Sponsoring lavish trips to Africa and Central Asia, the museum filled its halls with artifacts and an aura of adventure, supported by some of New York City’s most prominent men, including Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. All the while, the museum’s then president, Henry Fairfield Osborn, attempted to use his adventurers’ expeditions to fulfill a personal agenda: to propagate his belief in racial hierarchy.
Palace of Deception uncovers the complicated legacy of three iconic figures of the American Museum: the preeminent explorer Roy Chapman Andrews; Carl Akeley, the pioneering taxidermist who created so many of the museum’s most memorable exhibits; and Osborn, the museum’s president, who was once considered an authority on everything from paleontology and evolution to race and eugenics. From Andrews’s ambitions searching for fossils in the Gobi Desert to the construction of Akeley’s artistic masterpiece, the Hall of African Mammals, Darrin Lunde tells the story of the American’s Museum foundational years. Lunde also shows how the achievements of the museum’s adventurers were used to introduce residents of New York to a version of the natural world—one full of strict natural laws and categories—endorsed by the museum’s powerful leader.
Based on extensive diaries, letters, journals, and the author’s own experiences leading modern-day expeditions to several of the same places, Palace of Deception re-creates some of the most celebrated, globe-trotting journeys from natural history’s heyday. It also traces the larger, racially infused milieu that underwrote the golden age of exploration, uncovering the simmering anxieties about race behind the era’s greatest adventures. It is a legacy that still haunts natural history institutions today.
About the Author:
Darrin Lunde is the mammal collection manager at the National Museum of Natural History. Previously, he worked at the American Museum of Natural History, where he led numerous field expeditions throughout the world. He lives in Maryland with his family.
Advance Praise
"With electrifying prose and a riveting sense of purpose, Darrin Lunde pulls back the curtain on our country’s natural history institutions, revealing a legacy of exploitive ideas and practices. What he has found is at turns maddening, inspiring, and deeply moving. A modern masterpiece of nonfiction, Palace of Deception shakes the foundations of our beloved scientific museums, and the men who led them, while shining a light on the path forward." -Nathalia Holt, New York Times best-selling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls
"An epic, globe-trotting adventure full of fascinating characters, and exotic and dangerous locales." -Bill Schutt, author of Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History
"Darrin Lunde is a natural storyteller. These tales of derring-do by ‘museum men’ a century ago are also an occasion for reflection on the larger social purposes that natural history museums were meant to serve, not all of which were benign. Lunde underlines for us that it took later generations of museum professionals, among them the American Museum of Natural History anthropologist Margaret Mead, to replace the palace of deception with a theater of verity." -Ross MacPhee, author of End of the Megafauna
"Any scientist with a ready conclusion often discovers a distorted truth and Darrin Lunde’s latest masterpiece shows how evolutionary ideas tainted the study of natural history. Escaping their legacy is impossible and Palace of Deception teaches us why remembering their contributions—good and ill—empowers us today." -Michael Patrick Cullinane, author of Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon
"Darrin Lunde delivers an unflinching, essential account of the golden age of exploration, exposing one man’s racial ideologies that shaped the foundations of natural history collections. Palace of Deception arrives at a critical moment—one in which the decisions we make will define the future of museums, their collections, and the generations they educate. With masterful storytelling, Lunde presents the raw realities of this era, compelling us to acknowledge both the brilliance and the darkness that built the institutions we cherish. This book is a call to continued education and open discussion, fostering a deeper understanding of the complexities of science, exploration, and the forces that shaped museum collections." -George Dante, Jr., Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, Institute for Natural History Arts
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781324065678 |
| PRICE | US$29.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 288 |
