San Antonio College Library

"Among the most admired and rarest works ever created are the large-scale books of natural history. The detailed drawings and the remarkable color reproductions found in these magnificent editions truly astounded the art and book worlds. Great Natural History Books and their Creators reveals the incredible stories behind these exceptional collector's books. Ray Desmond engagingly shares with the reader the dramatic behind-the-scene story of how these...

"The Poetics of Natural History is about the daydreams of early American naturalists (from 1730 to 1868) and the collections they created around these dreams. Christoph Irmscher explores how, through the acts of organizing physical artifacts and reflecting upon their collections in writings and images, naturalists from John Bartram to Louis Agassiz were making sense of themselves and their world. These collections allowed them, in a way, to collect...