The Lives of Dillon Ripley: Natural Scientist, Wartime Spy, and Pioneering Leader of the Smithsonian Institution

By Roger D Stone and Roger D. Stone

Book Overview

A Yale-educated Renaissance man, S. Dillon Ripley was a "courtly, determined, hugely ambitious, energetic, funny, and colorful ornithologist, conservationist, and cultural standard-bearer" who led the Smithsonian Institution for twenty years, during its greatest period of growth. During his watch, from 1964 to 1984, the SI added eight new museums and seven new research centers and began publication of the Smithsonian magazine. It was Ripley's vision that transformed "the nation's attic" from a dusty archive to a vibrant educational and cultural institution, just as he had transformed Yale's Peabody museum before it. Prior to his career at the SI, and running parallel with it for the rest of his life, was Ripley's work as an ornithologist, begun in New Guinea in the 1930s, continued through his PhD from Harvard in 1943, and culminating in his landmark thirty-year project documenting the bird life of India. His lifelong passion for ornithology led him to positions of leadership in worldwide nature conservation. In the midst of these endeavors he was recruited in 1944 to the Office of Strategic Services, a Yalie club at the outset that became the forerunner of the modern CIA. Posted to Ceylon, he recruited and ran agents who reported from and infiltrated Japanese-held Southeast Asia. Roger D. Stone worked with Ripley on the board of the World Wildlife Fund. He has access to the Ripley family's archives and photos, as well as to the voluminous archives at the Smithsonian and the National Archives, and to over forty hours of transcribed interviews, conducted with Ripley at the Smithsonian.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1611686563
• ISBN13: 9781611686562
• Release Date: June 2017
• Publisher: Foreedge
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

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As a professional astrologer and student of metaphysics for over 25 years I felt compelled to share my thoughts about this amazing book. V.S. Ferguson has conqured the ultimate. Her talent for writing has made the impossible possible. Ferguson's story of Innana takes the reader to realms that will stretch the mind and change it forever. Innana chose the perfect messenger in Ferguson to take on such an awesome task. V.S.Ferguson,...

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INANNA REDEEMS ANNUNAKI BLOODLINE!

Having read most of Zecharia Sitchin's paradigm-shifting studies of Mesopotamian civilization and the Sumerian cuneiform tablets, I was absolutely delighted to find that Ms Ferguson had picked up where Sitchin left off and transferred the Annunaki saga to the much more fluid medium of the novel. By allowing herself the use of reactivated genetic memories (though some will insist it all issues from "an overheated imagination")...

This book adds personality to the gods and goddess of Sumer.

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Inanna Returns is a work of non-fiction, spellbinding.

Inanna Returns is a work of non-fiction which reads like an episode of the hit television show, "Falcon Crest". The Author, V.S. (Susan) Ferguson, has basically re-written The Bible and various other documents and translations of sacred nature into an easy to read and true depiction of the way our Planet has emerged into existance. Mrs.Ferguson has drawn upon the tales which we have read about through Christian upbringing...