AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

The golden age of expeditions sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History has more than enough potential to be a riveting picture-book topic, but it gets curiously wooden treatment from freelancers Rexer and Klein. As the museum launches its largest fund-raising drive ever, it hardly comes as a surprise that a chronicle of the museum's exploits afield, principally from the 1880s through the 1930s, should be released. It was the institution's heyday of collecting- -real Indiana Jones material (with all the attendant questions of dubious acquisition, a thorny issue to which the authors give a wide berth). Starting with a brief look at the museum's early years, the volume quickly gets to the meat and potatoes: Franz Boas taking measure of the indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest; Roy Chapman Andrews (probably Steven Spielberg's model) of Gobi fame; Theodore Roosevelt and CÉndido Mariano da Silva Rondon whacking through the lianas along the River of Doubt; Margaret Mead and her Samoan schoolgirls; Barnum Brown and his dinosaur bones— all heroic, near-mythic figures in anthropological and archaeological circles. The august museum, even in the midst of this chest-thumping, wouldn't write a thriller about its 125-year history, but these dramatic explorations beg for more than deadpan handling (``Andrews dreamed of finding the missing skull. The next day, after Andrews had been searching only a short time, there it was''). Adding badly needed color are the many exquisite, bewitching, hand-tinted lantern slides; brief sidebars display a flair for writing that the main text can only envy. Best here are the period photographs: Allow them to transport you, put grit in your teeth, chill in your bones. (90 full-color illustrations, 150 b&w illustrations, 10 maps) (Book-of-the-Month Club dividend selection; Natural Science Book Club main selection)