Behind the Crimson Curtain: The Rise and Fall of Peale's Museum

Product Description In 1786, Charles Willson Peale created the most important, and most famous, museum in Revolutionary-era America. A fusion of natural history and art, Peale's Philadelphia Museum was meant to be an embodiment of the Enlightenment. Behind the Crimson Curtain provides a unique window into science, art, and the Enlightenment in early America, and how these fed the appetites of a public hungry for "rational entertainment."Praise for Lee Dugatkin's Earlier BooksFor Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose, University of Chicago Press, 2009:"Fast-paced, snappy and suspenseful." --Financial TimesFor How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog), University of Chicago Press, 2017:"Sparkling ... part science, part Russian fairy tale, and part spy thriller." --New York Times Book Review About the Author Lee Dugatkin is a professor of biology and a College of Arts and Science Distinguished Scholar at the University of Louisville.