The growth of modern-day Alaska began with the Klondike gold discovery in 1896. Over the course of the next two decades, as prospectors, pioneers, and settlers rushed in, Alaska developed its agricultural and mineral resources, birthed a structure of highway and railroad transportation, and founded the Alaska cities we know today. All this activity occurred alongside the Progressive Age in American politics. It was a time of widespread reform, as Progressive politicians took on the powerful business trusts and enacted sweeping reforms to protect workers and consumers.
Alaska in the Progressive Age looks at how this national movement affected the Alaska territory. Though the reigning view is that Alaska was neglected and even abused by the federal government, Alton argues that from 1896 to 1916 the territory benefitted richly in the age of Progressive Democracy. As the population of Alaska grew, Congress responded to the needs of the nation’s northern possession, giving the territory a delegate to Congress, a locally elected legislature, and ultimately in 1914, the federally funded Alaska Railroad.
Much has been written about the development of modern-day Alaska, especially in terms of the Gold Rush and the origins of the Alaska Railroad. But this is the first history to put this era in the context of Progressive Age American politics. This unexplored look at how Progressivism reached the furthest corners of the United States is an especially timely book as the Progressive Movement shows signs of affecting Alaska again.

The rediscovery of a curator’s lost journal illuminates the astonishing African journey that formed the basis of the Chicago Field Museum’s famed collections

“Now” Is the Time to Collect tells the fascinating story of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History’s zoological expedition to Africa in 1896, the source of many of the museum’s foundational collections and an astounding episode in nineteenth-century science. After the well-publicized extinction of the dodo and Carolina parakeet and the collapse of the American bison population, late nineteenth-century naturalists expected many more vulnerable species to die out with spread of Western-style industrialization. This triggered a race to collect rare species of animals expected soon to be lost forever.

Established in 1893, Chicago’s ambitious Field Museum aimed to become a global center of study. Zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot persuaded museum patrons to fund an immediate expedition to British Somaliland (contemporary Somalia). There, his team hunted and killed hundreds of animals for the growing collection. On the trip was groundbreaking taxonomist Carl Akeley. Back in Chicago, Akeley created captivating lifelike dioramas of rare animal groups that enhanced the museum’s fame and remain popular to this day.

Enriched with illuminated passages from Elliot’s journal, only recently rediscovered, “Now” Is the Time to Collect is the first book of its kind by an American museum and a case study in what author Paul D. Brinkman calls “salvage zoology”—the practice of aggressively collecting rare animal specimens for preservation just prior to the birth of the modern conservation movement. It is a riveting account of the expedition, the travelers’ experiences in Somalia during its colonial period, and the astonishing origins of one of Chicago’s classic museum experiences.