Should a museum be an institution for the projection and protection of official culture, or should it be an outcome of the demands of the popular marketplace? Harrison (English, Virginia Commonwealth U.) provides evidence of how these two ideas clashed not only in practice (at Charles Wilson Peale's Philadelphia Museum, the US National Museum at the Smithsonian and at P.T. Barnum's American Museum) but in nineteenth-century literature. He acknowledges the continued existence of Barnum's ghost, then examines museums as representational sites, explores Hawthorne's interrogation of cultural authority in the commercial marketplace, Melville's ideas on ownership and cultural interregnum, Stowes' responses to stage versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Whitman's commentary on the politics of representation and museums as displays of specimens of democracy. The result is enlightening, particularly when we realize the debate continues to the present day. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)