Kingdom Under Glass

Kirk, who teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, offers a rollicking biography of Carl Akeley, an American taxidermist who preserved realistic-looking beasts complete with aura of "will," for 20th-century natural history museums. (His breakthrough was papiermâché.) But alive beats lifelike, so the author spends most of the book following Akeley's African safaris, where he hunts big game and touring tycoons who might fund his projects. These chapters combine epic adventure—Akeley endures waterless marches, fever, and bloody maulings by a leopard and an elephant—with the offbeat love story of Akeley and his crackshot wife, Mickie, who is forever rescuing and nursing her husband. (The marriage dissolves when Mickie essentially falls in love with a pet monkey who tears up their New York apartment.) A talented literary taxidermist, Kirk spruces up the story's anatomy with dramatic "inferences"— imagined scenes and imputed streams of consciousness—and heroic cameos including a memorable turn by Akeley's safari companion, Theodore Roosevelt. The result is a beguiling, novelistic portrait of a man and an era straining to hear the call of the wild. Photos. (Nov.)