A preview of Charles R. Knight

NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Richard Milner's Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time (Abrams Books, 2012). The preview consists of passages from Charles R. Knight's autobiography, in which he discusses his visit to the paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope's home — "No pictures, no curtains, nothing but the petrified skeletons of extinct monsters ... disposed in every available open space" — along with photographs of Cope and his rooms and Knight's own astonishing paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric fauna based on his conversations with Cope.

The reviewer for Science writes that Milner's book "surveys the life and work of the first and best known American mural painter of prehistoric life. The beautifully illustrated volume documents why he is also the most admired. ... Milner's book shows why Knight retains a prominent place in the worlds of modern wildlife art and, even more so, paleoart." Richard Milner is also the author of Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z (University of California Press, 2009), which Michael Shermer describes as "the single best volume ever published that covers all matters Darwinian from A to Z."