we tend to think we're the good guys. that make it is okay. it's a basic imbalance in the world that we maintain large nuclear arsenal but say other countries can't. that was the kind of issue that i discussed in talking about how we get to zero. >> the book, "the twilight of the bombs: recent ch rhodes. >> jay kirk recounts the life of taxidermist carl akeley. he recalls the hunting expeditions in africa where theodore roosevelt and tt barnum and the decision later in life to stop hunting and create sanctuaries for animals to live and be studied. from the academy of natural sciences in philadelphia, this is just over 45 minutes. >> hello and good evening. que so much for being here and

for that wonderful introduction. excuse me while -- i can't tell you how grateful i am to be here tonight at the academy of natural sciences and to see so many friendly faces. thank you so much for coming out tonight. i just can't believe it. i also want to assure any of you who might still be wondering know, there will not be an actual taxidermy demonstration in tonight's program. so apologies to any of you who are expecting. but i do have a i want to begin by telling you a story that took place 100 years ago at the top of mount kenya.

it was here in june, 1910 my friend karl illegally found itself attracting a creature that would forever change his life. he was with a small party of god in this and reporters just a thousand feet beneath a glacier. the elevation was highly enough that his hands were mum and he could barely hold his rifle. by this point i should say carl akeley, the explorer and a taxidermist already achieved a certain level of fame from having stuffed p.t. barnum's legendry elephant with this life like this for the general public sorcery. he was even more famous and natural history museum circles for already having revolutionized the art of taxidermy for using it within error of sorcery. and for inventing the habitat

diorama, the great illusions forged in a box. for now though he had already been in africa going on a year and is heading a hard time finding a male elephant large enough back to the american museum of natural history in new york city. he already collected a couple of e-mails and a young calf shot by his friend teddy roosevelt, who had come to africa. but he had yet to find the really big board he sought. he had scored half of africa by this point trying to find his perfect specimen and he had sailed over and over and over again. he had grown so frustrated some might say obsessed, let's just go all the way and say obsessed that the hunt had begun to resemble moby. finally he decided to go up

mount kenya the second highest peak in africa where he heard legends sold at mosques grew from their backsides and were in fact his wife and partner in crime, mickey, had previously backed the biggest elephant recorded only five years earlier and which is now on display in the lobby of the chicago field museum. but by now carvel and mickey's marriage was somewhat strange and he had gone alone of the think mckee behind the camp was of the rest of the party. this is mickey having a kind of classic safari styled breakfast. that's her in the back and that little critter on her lap is j.t. jr been her pet monkey dessel who would eventually come from at least for lord byron's

great statement about truth being stranger than fiction. more on that later. anyway, back on to mount kenya. carl found squirrel higher than he ever guessed above the timberline of 14,000 feet in the literal hi year where there was hitting the plasma. but right now he was creeping along on an ancient elephant trail he realized he was now tracking what was the biggest bull elephant he had ever come across. he had also begun to realize to his consternation at the same time he himself was being hunted by the bowl. the trail itself was a kind of mays, a series of interconnected passageways police overtime, the traverse feeding grounds high in

the mountain forests. indeed in the maze as carl tried to follow the tracks he ended by circling background to the same place from which he started almost as he had been set a ruse. finally to find the exit, carl was going along the perimeter when he found a massive pile of dung still steaming in the june messed. -- mist. i'm going to read to you a passage from my book. i realize i left it in my little atache down here so let me pull it out. >> it was then he began to have a distinct sense about this elephant and came over him gradually. the feeling was he finally found a bowl worthy of bringing back

to new york and the one he had been chasing after the last difficult year as it had only been one individual will all along that had set up this contest. but by now, he felt it that this was the one. even stranger as bull and the truckers kept walking through the maze he started getting the sense the elephant was truly waiting for him, the feeling he was being hunted as well and was not engaged in a contest with bull and he felt it right up to the moment when it came to a small clearing in the green bamboo and heard a loud crash in the woods 50 yards straight ahead. the trackers were already 20 yards for word on the path and not raced against the unknown. the porter's behind him had run off. carl took his 475 toll rifle while his gun went through the patient ritual of taking hold

and hoarding out inspection every single bullet from the van leer. the last thing he needed to add a critical moment like this was to load the wrong one. meanwhile he and ruffed a handkerchief from his hand back into his fingers and waiting for the trackers when which no more fanfare than entering the victorian home in the rate of the mid afternoon sunlight double was suddenly upon him. out of nowhere the tosk was at his chest as if the elephant had only been standing there hidden behind the bamboo curtain waiting for it to enter. what he remembered now was the safety on his rifle had caught. later his quarters would remember he got off one shot he did not remember the splintering of would or whether he got a shot off or not. what he did remember was the odd overwhelming sensation of

homesickness struggling for a moment with the safety and then he had done the unimaginable. he had thrown the rifle sight and reached out to grab hold of the tosk glanced past him at the force of the swinging log. a completely mad thing to do to climb aboard a charging elephant as if it were a speeding box car. it an almost automatic when something he had rehearsed and his line a thousand times before lift off his feet, lurched toward the sky somehow in the next split-second managing to get himself between the two tusks grabbing the author as well so he had a grip on both like the handle part of a gargantuan bicycle. there he was now writing the base of the giant bowl a massive timber overload of the forest pressed against the bridge of the trunk of his own terrified giblin reflection he knew to

expect no mercy. >> attempting to scrape off the face, the elephant thrust its tusks into the earth and plowed into the ground thanks to a stubborn undersoil. carl wasn't killed instantly but remains between the tosk is holding on for better life. as the elephant changed its footing, carl felt the chill breeze and took one last breath of the musk. the small and asia during blackness. ten hours later the runners would widen the base camp to give him the bad news.

when his wife had found him after completing a terrified and that times hard to believe it might rescue herself, she just found this bloody mean gold recovered and feared her husband was dead for sure. the elephant has crossed its chest, broken several lives more or less crudely skeleton and ripped open his right cheek so it dingell gruesomely exposing his teeth and his horrible grimace. amazingly, he survived even more surprising, perhaps, is the fact instead of calling it quits and quebec to america to a nice cozy hospital bed with clean bed sheets and running water he would spend the next three months in his tent while mickey ministered to him, changing his bandages, helping him to eat, and all the while continuing to manage the safari of some 150 quarters of the bears, crux,

scanners, all on hold while akeley lay on the cot delirious, hallucinating and on the brink of death. at this point some of you must be asking ourselves he had it coming to him, didn't he? [laughter] shooting these marvelous creatures and they fought back. i say first i ever heard of akeley and the first thing that made me think i might have a book ideas while i was in the middle of another story about cats and in my research i passed this kind of passing about the famous taxidermist who once struggled with his bear hands and i felt as well as the amazing and indeed, it is.

i always thought this would be cool had for the gap. [laughter] anyway, later on by the time that carl got axed by the elephant it was getting hard for me not to think maybe there is such a thing as. i also have to admit when i started writing the book that is pretty much how i felt. after all one of my all-time favorite quotes comes from john. if the war should occur between the wild beasts i would be tempted to sympathize with the bares. let me take a moment too seriously explain some of his motives and how he can to love them all the more for his paradoxical nature. after all it is hard to spend six years working on a book unless you find the character sympathetic and its brutal as

akeley that sometimes the i have an enormous amount of reflection for the taxidermist. but at first i did not clearly understand the larger rationale for his work even if i feel like i ever stood what drove him into the artist. rather than judge him from my enlightened 21st century perch it seemed necessary to write as closely as possible from his point of view just as it was important for me to write about all of my characters are as closely as possible from their point of view complete with limitations of their own thinking and the limitations set on them by the idea of giving knowledge of their era. trying to figure out my characters' motivations and by extension to understand the motivation of the era will end up being one of the most exciting and difficult struggles of writing the book. s first drawn to the obsessive

artist who not only risked his life over and over what went through such amazing and preposterous as interest lengths for his art. not only that, but here was a man who literally killed for his art, and i must admit it was a somewhat sinister quality that is partly to blame for my initial interest in the story. but beyond all that great intrigued, there soon emerged this much larger and ultimately more important question. why if this audience knew the animals were on the verge of extinction, which they did did they think it was a good idea to the wall and shoot a few more to put inside the museum. >> indeed akeley and his bosses at the museum believed with great certainty many were in

imminent threat of extinction and the fact this was why they thought it was a good idea, and imperative mission to go kill a few for the diorama before it was too many. at first blush it is one of those what were they thinking kind of questions, how exactly to the fine art of embalming equal conservation the part of the answer was quite simply as it turns out a matter of available technology. in terms of capturing lifelike images, the wild animals and natural habitat the state of photography couldn't even begin to compete with the art of taxidermy, which until akeley came along, and resolution negative the craft of this -- lovely [laughter] to this wasn't all that useful either except for the most rudimentary needs of taxonomists

to collect and catalog known species. quote, field photography was in its infancy as frederick flucas, a contemporary of akeley's, and director of the museum of natural history once put it, in the stage, as flucas put it, when it was not so difficult to photograph a bird in the open as it was to find the bird in the photograph at one meeting of the american ornithologists union around this time, one member pointed to a photograph stating that it was his one success in 150 negative. akeley himself had experienced similar frustration after he brought a motion picture camera to africa mocked for the sake of making movies per say but a tool to help them make better taxidermy. but the technology was simply not up to par. repeatedly when he tried to fill

in or anything but as a hippopotamus he lost its focus. the camera he used were about as nimble as a wooden suitcase to a tripod. filming a gazelle was like trying to follow a shooting star with a child's wobbly telescope. but regardless of the technology, and i will return to that in a moment, how was it possibly justifiable to murder species that were already thought to be teetering on the brink of extinction? i mean, how was this just cause for sober institutions like the museum of natural history with the field museum are of the academy of natural sciences or any of the authors. the first reason was that they believed many of the species were already doomed due to the ongoing colonization of the settlement of africa. the habitat of the encroachment of european civilization,

bushehr killing of wild life just as it had been in the west was enormous. akeley thought the elephant alone had a couple of months -- a couple of decades left at most, but here's the thing. america itself was only just waking up too horrible truth. america, which had always been synonymous with infinite resources given the fastness of the wilderness was beginning to realize maybe it was not so infinite after all. or at least some were just now waking up to this reality. most notably the american socialist president teddy roosevelt who started to set aside the national wilderness in the protection. t.r. was doing a very radical thing but also very practical thing for not designating the

parks nearly all of the love for nature which he had but because he had seen the writing on wall america's natural resources were shrinking. not everyone is all that. most people didn't really see that. likewise a lot of people felt it was fine to go and shoot 80 lions and 14 mountain gorillas, a double paradox for t.r. of course is that he was sadly one of those men. but this awareness really only was daunting and the idea of conservation itself, but a great idea was brand spanking new. but still, in the face of losing all of these amazing beasts wondering the african veld, the best chance they felt they had to preserve the knowledge of their existence was to preserve the images of the doomed wonders

enter carl akeley, the world's greatest taxidermist. by now, carl fought that he was comparing him in talent equal to only 50 guests at a great ancient greek sculptor who preserved images of the gods. the house such, his job in a nut shell was to take a last snapshot of the creation in all its splendor before it was snuffed out. which was a somewhat fatalistic philosophy, yes. was he charged with making time capsules of the vanishing world? yes. did he love the animals he was killing? i truly think he did, yes. i know he did. but the full-scale of his ultimate time capsule would only come to akeley after he'd taken the beating by the elephant back on mount kenya.

it was while he was confined to his tent, healing from his wounds, he began to have these feverish visions of what would become after several more herring expeditions and the three decades the grandiose akeley of african mammals. but while he leader was listening to the camp sounds during the long days from the jungle sounds of might he began to envision this monumental matrix based that engulfed his agitation. the space was dimly lit, a dark hall with illuminated by a series blast each curiously enough of the movie screen. over those months deal for only autrey field was of gradually until he imagined every last detail carefully estimated to his mind picture in where you

would please each charmed beast inside it's clear. imagining the all down to the smallest most exquisite. in the center to be a frozen herd of elephants still statutes. in a way he had to be grateful to the elephant who had nearly squashed him like a grape. without all that extra time recuperating, he very well never would have had this vision. there we go. he also, of course, have to be immensely grateful to his wife, nikki, who not only saved his life in a rescue effort that masked his own encounter for sheer terrifying adventure, but stood by him when he was back on his feet suffering from the ceiling crisis of courage. after all once he recovered he

had to resume the elephant hunt especially now if he was going to fulfill the dream of the ethic vision. but it was at this point he began to suffer the morrell and the gentle euphemism at the time that is as he went back to face the elephants he began to suffer the collapses, modern diagnosis would likely be ptsd. but the one lesson i definitely took away from working on this book was that the safari in life is not the best thing for one's mental being. both karlan and mickey in different ways were certainly of the lifestyle. but the center of the book, the thing that drew me to the most deeply character was the struggle of the so-called lapses of morality suffered repeatedly after the clash with the elephant. the whole big important issue of conservation aside, most of the

underlying story for me was about how it defines us and how much lives are spent trying to ease a bit. that common thread between fear and obsession. and this is where i think i identified with akeley the most. it is when he loses his nerve, when he starts to lose his religion. it is that this most human part of the story and most formidable i feel like i had my first as a writer. i also felt like it fit into the larger historical story packaging how much for your justified his work, fear of the natural world dwindling, closing in and in that sense the boxes of the dai de ramus, might compartments, the cramped time capsules seems like a metaphor. but what was just as confining them and what continues to confine us today disillusion of

separation which we deliver on ourselves and the participant to separate us from nature. it was having the partition momentarily lifted carl akeley dtca temmins redemption while hunting the mountain gorilla. curiously he brought along his new invention, motion picture camera and instrument that would revolutionize field of photography as much as the taxidermy methods have already revolutionized the exhibition, and i attribute his new sensibility, his sensitivity to the new contraption which love to him all the way to the belgian congo. i feel like he must of realized he did not need to rely on his gun alone now. if akeley had not experienced this metaphoric partition melt or shatter before his eyes the mountain gorillas would without a shadow of a doubt have gone extinct pay the most important

legacy without a question as saying the mountain gorilla. if akeley hadn't persuaded the belgians to build the first wildlife sanctuary and protect the mountain gorillas, diane fosse wouldn't have had anything left to protect. sigourney weaver would never have been nominated for an academy award in guerrilla's in the midst because there would only be the mist. in the and one of the bittersweet ironies of carl akeley's story is that reinventing the camera and making it capable of better preserving images he contributed to the demise of his art form we should count ourselves lucky, the animals shall count themselves lucky that we really don't need a didier pmi today because we have incredible shows like the bbc life ceased to post closer to nature to see what we otherwise would not see. but i do also sincerely feel

with a grain of salt that when we go to see the diorama in chicago or here we can't help but feel deeply affected. for me the experience of standing in front of one of the diorama at the animals forever frozen in time, each for ever. i always get the sense of what akeley must have felt when he had his own a moment with the guerrilla. when he was standing there you are not in all aware of the glass. you feel as though you can walk right into the scenery. the effect is like a nothing else and ultimately these are works of art. and i say that because the diorama continue to do the job of what art is supposed to accomplish which is to make us see the world more clearly and with compassion. thank you very much. [applause]

>> yes i will take questions. >> we just ask if you have a question explicitly used this audience -- microphone for the c-span audience. >> thank you. [laughter] >> nice try. >> yes, sir. >> before i get into any questions, i need to fails him with all my heart on behalf of the national taxidermy association and a free taxidermist in the world, thank

you for writing this book. [applause] >> thank you. thanks for teaching me about taxidermy. [inaudible] what do you think was his most underlying fear while back and new york city. >> fear of failure. not getting it right but not getting the money to do what he wanted to do. i mean this man was so driven by work and perfection. >> that is a great answer. understand a modern taxidermist being attracted to the sense of adventure and accomplishment

that basically if you are not an outdoor guide, what in your life attracted you to the persona of akeley himself? >> well, i think it was more than attraction at first. i like the idea that he was an artist who literally killed his own subjects. just to be quite honest that kind of craft my attention. he strangled a leopard with his bear hands. that caught my attention, too. the things that grab my attention for the tignes of the story, the sort of hard to believe parts of the story, but i quickly found that he embodies so many other things at that time and the birth of the conservation and the great awakening where they did not

realize maybe we could spend more time trying to save the animals rather than kill them, and there is this illusion of wilderness was in -- infinite psp thank you very much. [applause] >> the was a great talk. >> thank you. >> i thought you did a great job of teasing out the contradictions there and kind of exploring them. just a quick question wondering if you're familiar with donna hareway's were? >> absolutely. >> that jumped to mind when i saw your book came out. i think it's called patriarchy, right, and she takes up the question of some of the things she touched on were race, class, sex, the colonial aspect, and if you mention a few things about maybe the primatologist tend to

be women but if you thought about her reading of this story, of this character, and second white kind of comes to mind since you're mentioning murder and then of course the fact that you're interested in crime writing, the famous line we murder to dissect that this seems not quite that it seems we perhaps some people want to kill to reconstruct or to represent or to in this case may be domesticate where you take a living being and bring it into the interior of the museum of the house or something. so anyway, quick thoughts. >> i can say i am familiar with donna hareway and i loved reading her work. she is very high academic year roustabout and she put her focus on a museum to locate some of the social aspects of it, all

which account to be completely invalid point of view and i think the only thing i can say to that is that i was probably reading people like donna hareway made me keenly aware of the obvious major discrepancies and the racial issues of akeley dena the hunter of these invisible hoarders, and i felt somewhat conflicted about that, how to acknowledge that. i feel in a book i did try to acknowledge it in different ways and certainly my tendency is to write more about the scenes so i included a number of scenes talking about clashes that were taking place, which akeley was always just skirting like the most kind of awful war between the european settlers as the

african natives. there is a lot of food for thought there i hope i answered your question. >> thanks for the great talk. i don't know if you looked into the subtle but i was wondering if you could talk at all love of the parallels between the rise of modern taxidermy and what was along with the development at this point in time as a way to keep -- domesticate life wild animals. >> it goes hand in hand a little bit. many of the trustees of the american museum of natural history for instance putting theodore roosevelt, jpmorgan and some of their friends were very involved in the establishment of the bronx zoo. at the same time, they were trusties' putting their money into these diorama. some of the same people who have the same interest at a time i

think they have a somewhat more the cultic image of what the zoos might be and what might provide to their urban dwellers and ultimately ended up being so that might be my revision of looking back and thinking is all full and now the zoos are nicer but what is a good zoo any way? not my thing. yes there were definite parallels. another parallel to jump to some of the same people at the museum who again were trustees of the bronx zoo felt that it would serve a purpose to people living in new york and the cities that were suddenly just so much bigger, you know, they thought that it was very important, the value to nature, they tell you people having access to teacher and wilderness the the what help

put off or assuage some of the anxieties of what they would call over civilization. >> i almost thought my question was stolen. your book is a 2010 book, it is a modern book i mean, published now and i can't help but think about your own discussion and think about the zoo as it is conceived today as being these archives of dna and i was wondering if you're shooting of the book and thinking about it being a 2010 book thinking more about the zoos and their present mission to preserve, how that the form of your thinking about the past. >> i think i don't entirely understand the question. >> thinking about zoos today so much preserving life that is going. >> yes, rescue. samet it sounds like what you

are describing sounds so much when i listen to -- >> the fatalism? >> yes, the citadel as of today and i was wondering if in any way your her writing that thinking about zoos today came into -- >> e knous said. i think it is all very fatalistic but i mean, obviously in our society we reached the point where we feel completely fatalistic about things like now to global warming. but some people aren't so fatalistic about it. a breakthrough will happen. we can deal with this. i think the interesting thing a lot akeley and the people at the museum at the time and the great irony -- this answers somebody else's question, too, what really drew my attention. yes, first it was the more the artist think, that's kind of cool, and just above. paradoxical nature of the time and of the scientists, it was

just amazing to me that here's a point they felt like this is the best we can do. we know that the species are going to die. the best we can do is preserve an example, an image just as they did a plan of knowledge for us to have for people with the future so we will see what we lost. but that is what makes akeley's story is a wonderful was that it breaks through that. he has a redemption. like let's save the mountain gorilla ultimately is the story. ultimately optimistic. >> hello. >> [inaudible] -- i found fascinating was a little bit you mentioned about his wife, nickie.

she is bringing him that from the brink of death. her story is fascinating and i never heard of her and i'm wondering how much does she have riss she simply in his shadow? did she have the same as a taxidermist as well and how much of her story is in the book? >> that is a great question. i definitely sort of focus on carl in my lecture to write the book is definitely about akeley and nickie. i see it as a romance. her story is amazing. yes, it is phenomenal to me that a book hasn't been written about her before, like a full treatment, and not to go on for too long or give a spoiler, but she ended up after on her own crossing africa. the first female export across africa on her own working for

the brooklyn museum in the late 20's. but yes, she is just as much a part of the story as akeley. >> [inaudible] >> this is, the footage and using here is akeley's. marshall johnson, and they were kind of just a glitsy movie making couple of the time. of course they did a lot of like savage movies, movies like congorilla and wild savages of the south and stuff like that. but they decided they became friends with akeley. they were a bit younger than him and he convinced them to go to africa and film and they went over there for nearly a decade making the movies and had a kind of interesting symbiotic

relationship movies they were making and this is the movie is called simba, and some of the -- the american museum of natural history gave it its respect which gave them a little more respectability which i felt they didn't have. they had the box office but these didn't have the scientific credibility so we formed this relationship with akeley and the museum of natural history to film these movies and they got some underwriting for it and then the profits, 50% of the profits from our supposed to go to fund akeley's african hall, said he was actually with them. some of the footage is his and they had a whole fleet of the cameras. >> i just want to say i really enjoy reading the book. a reflector tonight.

my question is working with akeley's peter [inaudible] spent six years researching his papers with the memorabilia. so what was that like? with four akeley's letters and diaries like and also what did he think about his wife's monkey? [laughter] >> i don't want to talk about the monkey. [laughter] that would be a spoiler. >> [inaudible] >> a weird monkey. it was very tiring. [laughter] i love the kind of research. i spent many -- practically moved into the archives of the explorers club where he had been president for futures and the american museum of natural

history were just incredibly helpful, and it stressed phenomenal how much they actually have. they wield this part out. the catholic 50 archive box is the largest planned full of correspondence, invitations. the photographic archives were phenomenal in that way and it's like i wasn't there but i could look at the photographs. thousands and thousands of pictures. they made movies, akeley made movies some not as good as others put it was a great source to reconstruct the scenes to see what it really looks like and i read in their diaries and i guess all the primary documents somebody would use in a history book or a biography i probably had the one df