Home Book of Taxidermy and Tanning: The Amateur's Primer on Mounting Fish, Birds, Animals, Trophies

The word "taxidermy" derives from two Latin terms that combine to mean something like "the ordering of skins"--as in, "to place IN order," not "to place AN order," as one might do when one wants, say, a pizza. I highlight this distinction because my friend Neil, a remarkable hunter in his own right, recently used an inferior book on the subject of taxidermy to stuff and mount a pizza on the mantle above his fireplace. While in this particular case the mounted pizza suited the decor well (Neil's home subscribes to a kind of rustic Italian aesthetic that leans heavily on the pepperoni motif), I suspect that most aspiring taxidermists are more interested in mounting more traditional game animals such as the Kodiak bear, the bison, and the Wisconsin housecat, all of which are covered in exquisite detail by Grantz's landmark text.