The year is 1929. America’s large museums are filling out their exhibits with mysterious animals delivered from the remotest parts of the world. There are sporadic reports that the last large mammal, a Panda bear, might exist. Or might be as mythological as a Yeti. Two sons of former president Theodore Roosevelt, Kermit and Ted Jr. gather funding and head off to central Asia in search.
Walking more than 1,000 miles across the Tibetan plateau, through the Himalayas and into jungles of northwest China they search and hunt. Literally hunt, killing specimens of birds, monkeys, and small mammals destined for Chicago’s Field Museum. Aside from Christian missionaries who already appear to be ubiquitous, the Roosevelts are often the first westerners to penetrate into this part of the continent. Their hardships, physical, medical, and mental, are prolific.
Nathalie Holt does a marvelous job of translating diary entries into real-time accounts and with equal poise lays out the balance between scientific research practices of the early 20th century and the barbarity of killing everything the Roosevelt brothers can aim a gun at. But her closing – you will have to read the book yourself to learn if they find a Panda – is aimed right at our hearts and minds. Looking back, she says, across a century we are horrified at the craziness of shooting the world’s most endangered species. But, Holt cautions, what will people 100 years from now say about our destruction of habitat and heedless warming of earth’s climate.