Animal attractions: nature on display in American zoos | Elizabeth Hanson

Hanson, Elizabeth.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Octavo, illustrations, fine copy in dustwrapper.

A fascinating behind the scenes look at an important but historically neglected institution – the American zoo.

On a rainy day in May 1988, a lowland gorilla named Willie B. stepped outdoors for the first time in twenty-seven years, into a new landscape immersion exhibit. Born in Africa, Willie B. had been captured by an animal collector and sold to a zoo. During the decades he spent in a cage, zoos stopped collecting animals from the wild and Americans changed the ways they wished to view animals in the zoo. The first book-length history of American zoos, Animal Attractions examines the meaning of nature in the city by looking at the ways zoos have assembled and displayed their animal collections: It also shows that in their efforts to promote nature appreciation, zoos reveal much about how our culture envisions the natural world and the human place in itand how these ideas have changed.