Daniel Vandersommers is assistant professor of environmental history, University of Dayton, and coeditor of Zoo Studies: A New Humanities.

Deeply researched, marvelously insightful, and delightfully absorbing, Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo examines the complexities and contradictions inherent in the modern zoo. Vandersommers shows how the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park became a bustling site of wonder, entertainment, education, wildlife conservation, humane discourse, cultural advancement, civic pride, and the production and popularization of scientific and medical knowledge. At the same time, he reveals the darker side of this wildly popular and influential institution, which has embodied racist and nativist thinking, projected nationalism and imperial power, epitomized human dominion over non-humans, and been marred by the “violence of captivity” that permeates its very core. This outstanding book not only nicely captures the paradoxical, tangled layers of meaning associated with placing wildlife on public display, but also shows how zoos have come to occupy the gap between human expectations and the animals themselves." - Mark Barrow, is professor at Virginia Tech and author of Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: At the Entrance Gate1. Origins of a National Zoo2. Runaway Animals3. The Crossroads of Science and Popular Culture4. Animal Activism and the Zoo-Networked Nation5. Zoo Conservation and Its Discontents: Chasing Bighorn Sheep6. The Zoonotic Nature of TuberculosisConclusion: The National Zoo MovementNotesBibliographyIndex

Daniel Vandersommers is assistant professor of environmental history, University of Dayton, and coeditor of Zoo Studies: A New Humanities.

Deeply researched, marvelously insightful, and delightfully absorbing, Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo examines the complexities and contradictions inherent in the modern zoo. Vandersommers shows how the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park became a bustling site of wonder, entertainment, education, wildlife conservation, humane discourse, cultural advancement, civic pride, and the production and popularization of scientific and medical knowledge. At the same time, he reveals the darker side of this wildly popular and influential institution, which has embodied racist and nativist thinking, projected nationalism and imperial power, epitomized human dominion over non-humans, and been marred by the “violence of captivity” that permeates its very core. This outstanding book not only nicely captures the paradoxical, tangled layers of meaning associated with placing wildlife on public display, but also shows how zoos have come to occupy the gap between human expectations and the animals themselves." - Mark Barrow, is professor at Virginia Tech and author of Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: At the Entrance Gate1. Origins of a National Zoo2. Runaway Animals3. The Crossroads of Science and Popular Culture4. Animal Activism and the Zoo-Networked Nation5. Zoo Conservation and Its Discontents: Chasing Bighorn Sheep6. The Zoonotic Nature of TuberculosisConclusion: The National Zoo MovementNotesBibliographyIndex

Daniel Vandersommers is assistant professor of environmental history, University of Dayton, and coeditor of Zoo Studies: A New Humanities.

Deeply researched, marvelously insightful, and delightfully absorbing, Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo examines the complexities and contradictions inherent in the modern zoo. Vandersommers shows how the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoological Park became a bustling site of wonder, entertainment, education, wildlife conservation, humane discourse, cultural advancement, civic pride, and the production and popularization of scientific and medical knowledge. At the same time, he reveals the darker side of this wildly popular and influential institution, which has embodied racist and nativist thinking, projected nationalism and imperial power, epitomized human dominion over non-humans, and been marred by the “violence of captivity” that permeates its very core. This outstanding book not only nicely captures the paradoxical, tangled layers of meaning associated with placing wildlife on public display, but also shows how zoos have come to occupy the gap between human expectations and the animals themselves." - Mark Barrow, is professor at Virginia Tech and author of Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: At the Entrance Gate1. Origins of a National Zoo2. Runaway Animals3. The Crossroads of Science and Popular Culture4. Animal Activism and the Zoo-Networked Nation5. Zoo Conservation and Its Discontents: Chasing Bighorn Sheep6. The Zoonotic Nature of TuberculosisConclusion: The National Zoo MovementNotesBibliographyIndex