This is something new for me, doing a book review, but early in the Fall, the publisher, Henry Holt And Company Publishers, contacted me about this book, asked if I would read it and I’ll quote some of their e-mail, “An adventure packed history that reads like a novel as it recounts an extraordinary life in a remarkable age. Carl Akeley joined the hunters rushing to Africa, where he risked death time and again as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era such as Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum. Akeley also famously killed a leopard by strangling it with his bare hands! Over the course of three decades Akeley and his partner in adventure, his plucky and brazen wife Mickie, traveled across the continent and back, hunting down the beasts that would fill their ark back in New York City.” This got my interest

During these past Christmas Holidays I finished reading, Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals, written by Jay Kirk and published by Henry Holt And Company Publishers, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

It is a great story about one of the foremost taxidermists, Carl Ackley, that our world has ever known, who was also the creator of the famed African Hall at the New York Museum of Natural History. What makes the book great? Ackley is an adventurer, big game hunter, associate of the tycoons of the early 20th century and a friend of Teddy Roosevelt, our 26th President.

After having read the book, I can vouch that it is a very interesting story even during the holidays when I picked it up on a spare moment it kept my interest, especially the elephant and gorilla hunts! In the book, Mr. Kirk, the author, doesn’t drag or get too wordy, he’s an excellent writer!

As we say in Texas, “It’s a good ‘un!” and I’m going to give it to my friend, Mickey Donahoo, Senior Softball player, big game hunter, retired NASA engineer and a taxidermist himself!