Rachel Poliquin‘s The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing isn’t a book that fits neatly into any single category. Given its author’s interest and expertise in natural history museology and collecting, it would at first seem to fall into the history of natural history. However it also contains significant veins of art and cultural criticism, subjects that can (often with reason) be off-putting to all but the cognoscenti of those fields of study. As a copy has recently found its way to my desk, my interest is piqued and I look forward to giving it a thorough read-through at the first opportunity.
Founder and publisher of The Well-read Naturalist. Inveterate autodidact. Has repeatedly been found out standing in many fields. Plays well with otters.
