Overview

When dinosaur fossils were first discovered in the Wild West, they sparked one of the greatest scientific battles in American history.Over the past century it has been known by many names -- the Bone War, the Fossil Feud -- but the tragic story of the competition for fame and natural treasure between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, two leading paleontologists of the Gilded Age, remains prophetic of the conquest of the West as well as a watershed event in science. With a historian's eye and a novelist's skill, David Rains Wallace charts in fascinating detail the unrestrained rivalry between Cope and Marsh and their obsession to become the first to make available to the world the abundant, unknown fossils of the western badlands.This story will surely fascinate anyone who has had to confront the myriad facets of professional jealousy, its sterile brooding, and how it leads to an emotional abyss.

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Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, �Wallace� asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small. A crisp, well-informed, and fair-minded retelling of the Cope-Marsh 'bone war.' A crisp, well-informed, and fair-minded retelling of the Cope-Marsh ' bone war.' Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small. & quot; A crisp, well-informed, and fair-minded retelling of the Cope-Marsh & #39; bone war.& #39; & quot; & quot; Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small.& quot; Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small. The Chicago Sun-Times Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small. The Chicago Sun-Times Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small. The Chicago Sun-Times

A fine and dramatic rendering of the Marsh-Cope paleontological imbroglio, played out in the pages of the New York Herald, from Wallace (The Monkey's Bridge: Mysteries of Evolution in Central America, 1997, etc.). Professors O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope had been squabbling over their old bones for years before the Herald decided to inflate and sensationalize the feud in a bid to win their circulation war with the New York World. Both paleontologista were eminent in their own way: Marsh taught at Yale, advised presidenta, was a protege of congressmen, and had a sheaf of discoveries to his credit; Cope was the more imaginative, if more reckless, of the two, and had a equal number of superb fossil finds under his belt. At first, the rivalry was quaint: The patrician Edward may have considered Marsh not quite a gentleman. The academic Othniel probably regarded Copeas not quite a professional. Wallace tells the story with enthusiasm and relish as the professorial beard-pulling got out of hand. Cope claimed Marsh stole fossils and ideas; Marsh counterclaimed Cope was a crank and a fool who put dinosaur heads on the wrong end of the beast. But when Marsh used his political power to freeze Cope out of the fossil lands, Cope engaged a hack to smear Marsh in the Herald. The paper's publisher, the nefarious James Gordon Bennett Jr., played the scientists like stringed instruments until both crashed in an embarrassment of accusations. More's the pity, as Wallace notes, as their work demonstrating evolutionary transitions linking mammalian humanity to the transmutational continuum was overshadowed, and the public feud smashed John Wesley Powell's farsighted attempt to develop the West in sustainable fashion, as Powell's (the first chief of the US Geographical Survey) reputation was severely damaged in the Herald's pages. An ugly little episode that typified ah age so greedy that men fought over petrified bones. (Kirkus Reviews)

&#147;Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small.&#8221; <br>The Chicago Sun-Times

& quot; Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small.& quot;

Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small. The Chicago Sun-Times

Like Matthiessen, McPhee, and Gould, [Wallace] asks large questions but knows the answers we find will always be too small. <br><br>The Chicago Sun-Times

Author Information

David Rains Wallace is the author of fifteen books, including The Turquoise Dragon, The Quetzal and the Macaw, The Monkey's Bridge (a 1997 New York Times Notable Book), and The Klamath Knot, which won the Burroughs Medal in 1984. He was raised in Connecticut and graduated from Wesleyan College. He now lives in Berkeley, California.

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