From 1908 to 1933, the American Museum of Natural History launched more scientific field expeditions than at any other time in its existence. Sponsoring lavish trips to Africa and Central Asia, the museum filled its halls with artifacts and an aura of adventure, underwritten by some of New York City's most prominent men, such as Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan.

In Palace of Deception, Darrin Lunde uncovers the complicated legacy of three iconic figures of the American Museum: President Henry Fairfield Osborn, the preeminent explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, and Carl Akeley, the pioneering taxidermist who created so many of the museum's most memorable exhibits. Palace of Deception traces the racially infused milieu of natural history's heyday, which sought to enshrine the prevailing social hierarchy, and examines the simmering anxieties about human origins that were the backdrop to a golden age of exploration.