2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You'll be more than curious..., June 28, 2008
This review is from: Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks & Other Natural History Treasures at Amherst College (Paperback)
If you were a kid who dreamed of dinosaurs, leafed through creatively (if not too creatively) illustrated picture books before drifting off to sleep, who convinced yourself that the common stones found in your back yard were ancient fossils, then Curious Footprints is a delightful chance to dream again as a grown-up. You'll want to get this book for your nightstand. And don't forget to order a flashlight along with it.
The book weaves the story of early 19th Century Amherst College professor Edward Hitchcock's quest to explain the baffling 3-toed footprints found in Western Massachusetts stone by farmers and early geologists such as Hitchcock himself.
Author Nancy Pick describes Hitchcock's life with a wink and a nod, yet crafts a story with a certain amount of tension. She writes not just about his quest of discovery but also of his core self. Who did he love? Why was he driven so in his quest? And, did his strict New England Congregationalist beliefs lead his science astray?
Pick has come to know Hitchcock intimately through her research. She begins the book with a letter to him. She is as kind to him as he was inflexible in his Congregationalist religious views. She is as respectful to his anti-evolutionary theories as an undergraduate sitting in on the last class of a great professor whose time has already past.
Hitchcock tramped the hills and valleys of Massachusetts mapping geology (he was the first to map the entire state) and searching for an explanation for the mysterious footprints (he never found any bones). He came to believe that giant birds were responsible, a theory he clung to despite much evidence at the time to the contrary. And here is Pick's wink and nod: paradoxically many modern scientists think that birds are descendent from dinosaurs, some of which maybe even had feathers.
The book is stunningly illustrated with Frank Ward's photographs of artifacts, footprints, and other rare specimens from Hitchcock's collection, much of which remained hidden until recently in the basement of the College's old geology museum. One, of a bluebird wrapped in tissue paper waiting for storage, seems to dare us to question history in much the same way as Hitchcock baffled his own self.
This is a treasure of a book for its story and for its images. Pick writes as if she is personally leading us on a tour of the new museum which now displays those very same curious footprints. But she is no regular tour guide. Be prepared to question, second guess, imagine, and to smile.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Something for the mind and the eyes., December 20, 2006
This review is from: Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks & Other Natural History Treasures at Amherst College (Paperback)
A truly bizarre tale of one of America's pioneer scientists, Professor Hitchcock of Amherst College who was a friend both to fossils -- he amassed the largest collection of dinosaur tracks in the U.S. -- and to the Bible. A very entertaining account of the development of Amherst College's significant natural history collection. The razor sharp prose is perfectly complemented by witty and evocative photographs of Amherst's collection. A great gift for any natural history lover or dinosaur afficionado.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Curious Book, November 1, 2010
This review is from: Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks & Other Natural History Treasures at Amherst College (Paperback)
I was disappointed with this book. I had hoped for some insight into the dinosaur footprints and trackways that were collected by Prof Hitchcock from the Connecticut Valley, and that went to Amherst College, but it is mainly a history and biography of the professor and his problems. Hardly anything about the footprints themselves.
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