Palace of Deception: Museum Men and the Rise of Scientific Racism

by Darrin Lunde

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, underwritten by some of New York City’s most prominent men, such as Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan.

In Palace of Deception, Darrin Lunde uncovers the complicated legacy of three iconic figures of the American Museum: President Henry Fairfield Osborn, the preeminent explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, and Carl Akeley, the pioneering taxidermist who created so many of the museum’s most memorable exhibits. Lunde traces the racially infused milieu of natural history’s heyday, which sought to enshrine the prevailing social hierarchy, and examines the simmering anxieties about human origins that were the backdrop to a golden age of exploration.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Audiobook, Politics, Nature, Museums

288 pages, Hardcover

Published November 4, 2025

Reviews

[Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book describes the early days of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Much of its focus is on museum president Henry Fairfield Osborn, paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, and taxidermist Carl Akeley. A book written by Andrews sparked my interest in dinosaurs when I was very young. And the museum was one of my favorite places to visit when I was a child. I am sure I saw many of the exhibits created by Akeley. I’ve since lost my taste for viewing dead animals and have ambivalent feelings about the whole concept of the museum, but I remember my initial wonder and still appreciate the educational value of the museum.

The title of the book is somewhat misleading. Yes, the founders of the museum were patronizing, immigrant-hating white supremacists who skewed findings to advance their theories. (You can’t explain that away by saying they were a product of their time, since those attitudes are still alive and on full display today.) However, that is only a minor part of the book. The book describes the grueling and often dangerous adventures undertaken in order to collect specimens for the museum. I was drawn to Akeley, who was so dedicated to accurately portraying the beauty of nature. No one had any qualms about killing these animals in order to further their objectives. The book does not gloss over the many questionable decisions made in both the collection and display of their findings. It seems to be a fair and accurate presentation by an author who has spent his entire career at natural history museums.

[Logan Kedzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book does not live up to its title, but might be better for it?

This is a book on the early years of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, told in triple biography of three of its foundational persons: Henry Fairfield Osborn, Carl Akeley, & Roy Chapman Andrews: the administrator, the taxidermist, and the explorer, though all titles are a loose fit.

This is the story of the museum at its most museum-y, where what work the people are doing for the museum is its most in alignment with the P-public's view of the role of museums and who works there, down to one of them having a fear of snakes. All of them live film-worthy lives, including Akeley's deconstructed trope version of Bringing Up Baby. My skepticism strained at some of the stories. It is often situations where it does not seem like we have much verifiable information, and the author prints the legend, usually, but the wilder stories feel in accord with the more established ones. Besides, the rule of cool wins out here.

Maybe the most novel bit to me was the degree to which it seemed like these people were aware of the problems that would become evident in their methods later on. It is right to call these men conservationists. The moral arc of Akeley ends up somewhere in concordance with contemporary environmentalism. But their motivations often arose out of the advocacy of T.R. Roosevelt or John Muir, focused on the notion of a "frontier," full of Muscular Christianity or something that passes for it in dim light. And their methods often are destroying the town to save it sort of paradox: let's kill these animals before C-Civilization does.

The author shows how there is a feedback loop - again, quite consciously - between racist ideas and and how the people here were lauded. This wasn't any of that myopia-inducing Jewish science; this was natural history, and not only did the results of the work support the racist superstructure but the work itself was considered proof of racism's accuracy. The act of the research itself in its boy's own adventure qualities was self-proving of the qualities that made the whites superior. Wilderness preservation was positive eugenics in creating places where white people could experience what made them great.

The book then is something of a mea culpa on the part of the author, working in the AMNH through the transition into modernity, starting work when hunting was considered a job skill and continuing working in museums into today, where something like that is considered antithetical to the organization's purpose. And this is, maybe, where things get a little off.

Osborn in particular was a racist and arch-eugenicist. His Age of Man exhibit in particular is racist, my love of Charles Knight notwithstanding, and beyond that works to establish tropes about science and evolution that stick with us today, practically divorced from racism, yet still creating problems. Outside of being morally incorrect, he was factually wrong, and refused to adjust his beliefs in light of better data.

And yet, while you do not need to hand it to Osborn, I felt that the book was unfair. In specific, because it is not a biography of Osborn, it is left to treat Osborn's ideas as sui generis in the interest of room, which I have mixed feelings towards. It is the third opinion paradox in work, where the question is one that has more texture than the simple answer, but the simple answer is still correct.

I am uncertain whether the author thought it necessary to hedge against hagiography or whether an editor felt that this was the sexy way to move copies. Or provoke controversy, since the current administration's fashionable eugenics and war on history is such that I assume this book will get pilloried by the Wrongest amongst us. This is despite the book itself serving up some of that complexity: the stuff these people did is often cool and the ugliness is complicated by their own complexity as people.

So it is the sort of book that I felt lacking in detail for its exploration of scientific racism as mirrored in the AMNH, and left me wanting to read more about the Ages of Man exhibit and similar in specific of its context, but that I still liked and strongly recommend for its captivating storytelling and good writing style.

My thanks to the author, Darrin Lunde, for writing the book, and to the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, for making the ARC available to me.

[Drew Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was impressed with the overall direction of this book. I gotta say though, the title was a little misleading, as the scientific racism doesn't really take a front seat to the story. It is clearly there, but it seemed that the bigger part of the story was about the museum men traveling the world to gather samples of animals for their museums.

Still, a well-researched and engaging story of the men who created the 'palaces of deception' at the beginning of the modern world.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ‘Museum Men’ who travelled to remote and wild places to gather specimens for the new natural history museums believed that the animals they hunted were going extinct, and it was up to them to preserve their sublimity for the future. The massacred thousands, skinned and deboned them on site, and later reconstructed them with advanced taxidermy techniques. The dioramas showing the animals in their natural habitat, and the displaying of live animals in a habitat and not a cage, were innovative.

Darrin Lunde worked at the American Museum of Natural HIstory (AMNH) and the Smithsonian Institute for decades before he discovered that the founders and explorers who created them had an agenda beyond sharing the awesome beauty of nature. They believed in the ‘science’ of eugenics and the classification of humankind by races designated on an evolutionary scale that put ‘Nordic’ white Europeans at the top. With immigration, these men feared that the purity of American blood would be debased by intermixing.

For Osborn, wealthy White Protestant men were just as much an endangered species as any one of Akeley’s animals… from Palace of Deception by Darrin Lunde

Henry Fairfield Osborn as president of the AMNH supported expeditions that would support his beliefs. He sent Roy Chapman Andrews into the Gobi desert hoping to find the ‘missing link’ proving that the Nordics evolved in Asia, not Africa. Andrews famously found the first dinosaur eggs. Carl Akeley developed the taxidermy techniques and imagined the dioramas reflecting the animals’ native habitat.

The adventures of the Museum Men brought to mind Indiana Jones as they battled a campsite overtaken by asps, bandits and elephant attacks, and gruesome accidents. Osborn bought into the ‘strenuous life,’ as did Teddy Roosevelt, believing that hunting and struggling with the elements strengthened the species.

My mind flashed to so many connections while reading this book. I had read a book about dinosaurs by Andrews as a child as did my son. I have been to the Bronx Zoo and could not imagine how before its founding the land was an ‘unbroken wilderness….almost as wild and unkempt as the heart of the Adirondacks.” I recalled books that referenced the eugenics movement, including Tom Buchanan’s rantings in The Great Gatsby, our book club selection this month, and Ellen Marie Wiseman’s The Lies They Told portraying how American institutions profiled immigrants and citizens through eugenics.

Carl Akeley died while on his last expedition, determined to find the scene where he first saw gorillas, high in the cloudy hills, an ‘elfin’ forest that haunted him. The African Hall that he envisioned portrays a vanishing world that Akeley loved. It was also the product of ideas and practices we find, or should find, abhorrent today.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[etherealfire · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Frankkie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me want to visit natural history museums and also never want to go to one again, if that makes sense. I knew their history was problematic, but Palace of Deception gave me another perspective by highlighting the people behind the exhibits. It’s the familiar pattern of entitled white men forcing their beliefs onto the world without stopping to question the ethics or the harm.

The logic is wild - killing dozens of animals in the name of preservation because they didn’t trust future humans to do better. Even worse is how confidently bias and visual observation were treated as fact, including attempts to classify human races like animal species. We’ve evolved past that (no pun intended), but the damage from those racist “scientific” conclusions still affects society today.

The writing can be dry, but the content stays fascinating. The scale of what these scientists did to “preserve” wildlife is remarkable, even as the methods remain deeply problematic. That contradiction is what made this book interesting for me.

(3.5 stars rounded down)

I received this book as an eARC.

[Margaret Balwierz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a very interesting and exciting read. Lunde is a strong writer and the adventure of the explorers lends itself to a compelling story with some great scenes. Perfect for those who like history and adventure.
The title a bit misleading, the scientific racism takes a back seat to the larger narrative about the history of the American Museum of Natural History. Namely about how Henry Fairfield Osborn supported the explorations of Roy Chapman Andrews and Carl Akeley to attempt to prove his ideas of white supremacy. The tie in to the scientific racism came in the third part, so it would have been nice to add more evidence and argument woven throughout the text to create a more solid connection. This is the only reason I'm marking down a star.

Thanks to NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company for this Advanced Reader Copy.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As one who worked as both an anthropologist and part-time Adjunct curator, I was excited to read this excellent book. For a non-fiction book, this is a page-turner, with suspense, a narrative arc, as well as interesting characters. I was impressed by how effectively the author mined archival sources and interviews to paint a three-dimensional portrait of the characters and museum dramas and expeditions of this era. The setting of natural history museums is very familiar to me, but I knew far less about the animal side of museums and taxidermy in this era. The info is absolutely fascinating. I much enjoyed this book and will be recommending it to colleagues and students. My one minor complaint is that this portrait of the role of the New York Museum of Natural History leaders (and others) in promoting scientific racism in the early 20th century could be a bit more nuanced. There were a number of cultural anthropologists, led primarily by museum anthropologist Franz Boas, who fought vehemently against scientific racism in museums and scholarship for much of his career--it is unfortunate that this story is not recounted in this otherwise fascinating book.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 An interesting read with important information. Like other reviewers have pointed out, the scientific racism aspect could have been better throughout, or the book should really be billed as an early history of the American Museum of Natural History, as the racist underpinnings aren't really a big focus until the last 1/4 of the book. For that, I have to bring it down to a 3.5.

Thanks NetGalley for the advanced reader copy!

[Kayla Tornello · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book focuses less on scientific racism than the men who espoused these views. We learn how they went on expeditions in an attempt to find artifacts to prove their theories. We also learn how they choose what to display at their museums.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book that delves both into the actual expeditions that some of New York's largest museums went on in the years around their founding, and how deeply involved they were in eugenics movements (yay scientific racism!). And here the criticism is coming from inside the house (another museum worker), and is a white man, so it will actually hold water with certain crowds. Absolutely worth reading when it comes out this winter!