{"product_id":"capturing-kahanamoku-how-a-surfing-legend-and-a-scientific-obsession-redefined-race-and-culture-isbn-9780063279971","title":"Capturing Kahanamoku: How a Surfing Legend and a Scientific Obsession Redefined Race and Culture","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"An engaging romp.\" — \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A haunting, quietly devastating excavation of a story we should all know but don’t: how a surfing legend became the target of eugenic obsession... Gorgeously written and brilliantly researched, this book is both a warning and a wonder.\" — Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Aviator and the Showman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fascinating untold story of one scientist’s pursuit of a legendary surfer in his quest to define human nature, written with the compelling drama and narrative insight of \u003ci\u003eWhy Fish Don’t Exist\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Lost City of Z. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\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\u003cp\u003eIn 1920, the museum’s director, Henry Fairfield Osborn, traveled to Hawaii 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\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\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/i\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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA heady blend of \u003ci\u003eBarbarian Days\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/i\u003e is a twentieth-century saga with ever-clearer implications for our times.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/i\u003e includes 16-20 black-and-white photos throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“Opens with a primer on 1,000-plus years of surf lore, and features Duke Kahanamoku, the 'father of modern surfing,' but all of this serves as a jumping-off point for an engaging romp through the most consequential period of 'race science' — i.e., eugenics — in American history.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"[A] strange and captivating account... Rossi excels at exposing the bunk pseudoscience at the heart of eugenicists' mystical fascination with race... readers will find this a fascinating look at the painful intersection of Hawaiian and sports history with an ignominious branch of science.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Michael Rossi’s \u003cem\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/em\u003e is a haunting, quietly devastating excavation of a story we should all know but don’t: how a surfing legend became the target of eugenic obsession. From the sunlit waves of Hawaii to the cold basements of American museums, Rossi reveals how race science wasn’t just pseudoscience—it was performance, delusion, and erasure, carried out in the name of progress. Gorgeously written and brilliantly researched, this book is both a warning and a wonder.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLaurie Gwen Shapiro, author of The Aviator and the Showman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A fascinating story with compelling characters—some nobler than others. Rossi delivers a stunning study of our basest and purest natures that speaks eloquently, and frighteningly, to the moral perils of the pursuit of human perfection. Science and culture collide here in surprising and provocative confluence. \u003cem\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/em\u003e shows why history—especially brilliantly written history—will always remain topical.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBuddy Levy, bestselling author of Realm of Ice and Sky and River of Darkness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/em\u003e is a riveting and timely exploration of how science, race, and power collided in the 20th century and how the echoes still reverberate today. With cinematic storytelling and meticulous research, Rossi shows how science can be manipulated to serve social ideologies and how those ideologies can, in turn, reshape science. \u003cem\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/em\u003e is not just a story about the past. It’s a reflection on who we are, how we see each other, and the urgent need to use science responsibly; as a tool for understanding, not oppression.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDr. Heather Berlin, neuroscientist, host of the PBS Nova series Your Brain, and co-host of StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Michael Rossi has penned one of the weirder and wilder rides in the weird and wild ride that is the history of surfing. \u003cem\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/em\u003e is a scientific detective story into the forgotten side of surfing, or a surfing detective story into the dark side of science. It’s a troubling legacy of obsession tucked inside a tropical legend of perfection—and a saga told by Rossi with grace, rigor and ten-toes-on-the-nose.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSteven Kotler, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Impossible and West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A revelatory, immersive dive into the life of Duke Kahanamoku. This brilliantly rendered history compels us to reconsider our notions of physical beauty and national identity, and raises important questions about the perils of pseudoscience. Michael Rossi has cast a better likeness of the Duke than any sculptor could have dreamed.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDan Reiter, author of On a Rising Swell\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Rossi takes a nuanced, personal approach to the historical characters featured in his book.. [A] largely accessible account of the development of eugenics in the late-19th through early-20th centuries.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChicago Reader\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eCapturing Kahanamoku\u003c\/i\u003e deserves applause for wrangling a sticky subject and holding it up to the light. I was reminded of other acclaimed 'history of science' volumes with well-researched and engrossing narratives, like \u003ci\u003eThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks\u003c\/i\u003e by Rebecca Skloot or \u003ci\u003eThe Emperor of All Maladies\u003c\/i\u003e by Siddhartha Mukherjee.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChicago Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HarperOne","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48587987222757,"sku":"NP9780063279971","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780063279971.jpg?v=1773959928","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/capturing-kahanamoku-how-a-surfing-legend-and-a-scientific-obsession-redefined-race-and-culture-isbn-9780063279971","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}