When it comes to the recounting of history, the focus has traditionally been on either wars or politics. However when it comes to places like the American west, the land itself has played as much a part in shaping what happened there – and indeed what is still happening – as either of these two traditional foci.
A best-selling novelist, highly acclaimed professor of literature, and thrice a nominee for the Nobel Prize, Vladimir Nabokov was also an avid lepidopterist for a time employed by Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology as a part-time research fellow specializing in the curation of the museum’s collection of butterflies.