Today's thread ·
September 26, 2026

Travels on the Edge: A Naturalist's Notes From the Back of Beyond

There will always be parts of the world where politics, wars, or natural disasters make travel unwise, but very few that are naturally inaccessible. By sheer good fortune, I had a chance – and a reason – to explore some of those remote places. For fifty years, I served as a photographer, chronicler, and historian of research expeditions for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (now part of Drexel University). In that time, I traveled to some of the world’s most beautiful and interesting places under conditions that few have ever had, and that even fewer will ever have again. Travels on the Edge, A Naturalist’s Notes from the Back of Beyond (American Philosophical Society Press, 2026) is a collection of stand-alone essays about those experiences. In it, I recount some of the most memorable parts of a career that was, in many ways, a throwback to an earlier era.

Great Wall China
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Benjamin R. Cohen
From the archive ·
March 25, 2020

Pure Adulteration

Benjamin R. Cohen
Pure Adulteration is about the origins of manufactured food. More centrally, it is about the struggles people had with the introduction of new foods in the later 1800s. The book...
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