Collecting the Globe

"Collecting the Globe is chock-full of appealing incidents and details . . . The work succeeds admirably in providing a detailed history of the East India Marine Society Museum. Public historians interested in earlier generations’ struggles with collecting, arranging, and preserving materials will find much to spark thought and conversation."—The Public Historian

"Well researched, full of compelling details and anecdotes, and nicely written, Collecting the Globe will appeal to anyone interested in museums, maritime history, and nineteenth-century patterns of trade and urban development."—Andrew McClellan, author of The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao

"The book is not simply an origin story but a trip through time . . . Reading Collecting the Globe is a bit like observing a zoetrope story in motion—the story is compelling, but the mechanism of the story’s production is equally fascinating.”—New England Quarterly

"Collecting the Globe fulfills its mission as part of University of Massachusetts Press's Public History in Historical Perspective series. It is a fascinating view into the creation of the country’s first museum that collected on an international basis nearly fifty years before the formation of the Smithsonian Institution."—H-Net Reviews