Ever find yourself wondering what possessed people to skin and stuff animals and then mount them on their walls or build dioramas based around them and install them in giant glass cases in museums?  Well, wonder no more!  University of Alabama professor and Copacetic customer Dave Madden has spent the last several years of his life putting together a book that answers this very question.  Beginning with the "father of modern taxidermy," Carl Akeley, who created the Akeley Hall of African Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, Madden continues on a journey that brings him to the World Taxidermy Championships, a taxidermy academy, the garage workshops of taxidermy enthusiasts and many other taxidermy-related locales, as he spares no expense (affordable by someone living on a professor's salary) to bring his readers this "thought-provoking blend of history, biology and philosophy."

Ever wonder where all the money goes?  Oliver Bullough has the answer: Moneyland!  Read it and weep.

Recommended  – if you think you can stomach it...

Anyone intrigued can dive right in and read some of the precursor articles that were later incorporated – in revised form – into Moneyland, along with more recent pieces covering more or less the same beat, here on Oliver Bullough's archive on The Guardian (scroll down for the earlier articles that were adapted for inclusion in Moneyland).