Stanley's Dream

Jacalyn Duffin, physician and historian, is professor emerita at Queen's University, where she held the Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine from 1988 to 2017.

"Combining the history of science with the political history of the Rapa Nui, Stanley's Dream is a story about the complex and often inexplicable interactions among researchers and their research subjects on a remote colonial island, tracking the passionate love stories and the successful and failed scientific aims of a group of adventurous scientists, social scientists, and the media." Anne Kveim Lie, University of Oslo "Lively and very personal, Stanley's Dream is not just a thorough investigation into the making of colonial science but a highly original one. At times, it almost reads like a thriller as Duffin skilfully unfolds the mysteries behind the mission to Easter Island. This book is both excellent and essential." Laurence Monnais, Université de Montreal "In her ambitious non-fiction exploration of the 1964–65 Canadian-led expedition to Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, Jacalyn Duffin makes it clear there will be no detail left unexplored, no missing bibliographic data, and certainly nothing resembling a composite. The result is a capacious book in which an old story is ushered back into the light ... Duffin achieves a fascinating bait and switch in the latter third of Stanley's Dream. A hero emerges." Literary Review of Canada "An intriguing detailed compendium, retrospective analysis, and overall fascinating story of one of Canada's major standalone contributions to international science." The Ormsby Review "Duffin describes Stanley's Dream as the biography of an expedition and its offspring, but it is more than that. Her research has brought recognition to metei and closure to the people of Rapa Nui and her book serves as a foundation for future scholarship. As a historian of science and now a medical student, I could not put it down!" Canadian Historical Review"To the primary objective of Stanley's Dream, [intended] as "a stand-in for Skoryna's never-written final report"… the book succeeds exquisitely. It is wonderfully researched, overflowing with resonant details, and beautifully illustrated. While these qualities combine to form a definitive and richly humanizing reference for scholars in diverse fields with interests bearing on the expedition, its aftermath, and related questions – the perfect tribute, surely, for an unlikely and many-sided undertaking of pivotal consequence to the lives of its participants and beyond." Canadian Bulletin of Medical History