Examines the history of the Peabody Museum of Natural History in the United States, discussing the Museum's central role in many of the last 150 years' greatest scientific discoveries in North America, including dinosaurs, the theory of evolution, and the first-ever study of Caribbean archaeology, bringing to life pre-colonial American history like never before.

Introduction : hunting for truffles -- A West that was actually wild -- The patriarch -- The education of O.C. Marsh -- The wooing of George Peabody -- Rock render -- A rumor of war -- The Marsh expeditions -- Professor M on the warpath -- The year of enormous dinosaurs -- Fossils, buffalo, and the birth of American conservation -- A building of their own -- In the shadow of O.C. Marsh -- The prince of bone hunters -- Bone wars -- Trilobite magic and cycad obsessions -- Mapping ancient worlds -- A city raised like a chalice -- Teaching evolution -- The rise of modern ecology -- The beauty of the beasts -- The art of being invisible -- Into the unmapped world -- Zoology in the time of geneticists -- The man who saved dinosaurs -- Epilogue -- The Peabody's scientists.