{"product_id":"capturing-kahanamoku-how-a-surfing-legend-and-a-scientific-obsession-redefined-race-and-culture","title":"Capturing Kahanamoku: How a Surfing Legend and a Scientific Obsession Redefined Race and Culture","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBy Michael Rossi | Hardcover\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe fascinating untold story of one scientist's pursuit of a legendary surfer in his quest to define human nature.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDeep in the archives of New York's American Museum of Natural History sits a wardrobe filled with fifty plaster casts of human heads a century old. How they came to be is the story of one of the most consequential, and yet least-known, encounters in the history of science.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1920, the museum's director, Henry Fairfield Osborn, traveled to Hawai'i on an anthropological research trip. While there, he took a surfing lesson with Duke Kahanamoku, the famous surf-rider and budding movie star. For Osborn, a fervent eugenicist, the tall, muscular Kahanamoku embodied the \"pure racial type\" he was desperate to understand and, more significantly, preserve, in the human race.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUpon his return to New York, Osborn's fixation grew. He dispatched young scientist Louis Sullivan to Honolulu to measure, photograph, and cast in plaster Kahanamoku and other Hawaiian people. The study touched off a series of events that forever changed how we think about race, culture, science, and the essence of humanity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/em\u003e, historian Michael Rossi draws on archival research and firsthand interviews to weave together a truly fascinating cultural history that is an absorbing account of obsession, a cautionary tale about the subjectivity of science, a warning of the pernicious and lasting impact of eugenics, a meditation on humanity, and the story of a man whose personhood shunned classification. A heady blend of \u003cem\u003eBarbarian Days\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/em\u003e is a twentieth-century saga with ever-clearer implications for our times.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HarperCollins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50518987309218,"sku":"9780063279971","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0448\/5162\/6146\/files\/6336cecf-ffbf-47dc-bd4c-fdc754cf6edd.jpg?v=1790212748","url":"https:\/\/dashophnl.com\/products\/capturing-kahanamoku-how-a-surfing-legend-and-a-scientific-obsession-redefined-race-and-culture","provider":"da Shop: books + curiosities","version":"1.0","type":"link"}