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I was looking through some books today & thought I'd share a favorite. Arthur Loveridge's "Reptiles of the Pacific World" published in 1945 near the end of WWII. One of many natural history books issued to US service members 
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These books were given to soldiers as a way to protect themselves from dangerous plants & animals & provide basic natural history knowledge to use in emergency situations. 2/
In addition to educating soldiers, many of these books included detailed instructions on collecting & preserving natural history specimens. Soldiers were encouraged to ship specimens to the museum addresses provided in the books 3/
I obtained my copy of Loveridge's book when the University of Minnesota's Natural History Library closed and liquidated surplus books. 4/
Writing in the margins indicates this copy belonged to a service member that had served in the Pacific - in Hollandia (now Jayapura), New Guinea in April, 1945 and Manila, The Philippines in October, 1945. 5/
The previous owner's name is Borys Malkin, an anthropologist at the University of Minnesota in the late 1950s. Born in Russia & raised in Poland, Malkin emigrated to the US in 1938. He joined the US army in 1941 & served in the Pacific during the war https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borys_Malkin 6/
side note - the hardcover version of "Reptiles of the Pacific World" was published in late 1945 & not sent to soldiers - they received a softcover edition printed earlier in the year - so my copy was most likely obtained by Malkin after the war 7/
Malkin was an anthropologist, entomologist, & herpetologist and collected tens of thousands of biological and anthropological specimens for museums around the world https://bionomia.net/Q2911375 8/
Despite a long career doing fieldwork Malkin only described one species (as far as I can tell), but it was a good one! The Golden Dart Frog (Phyllobates terribilis) https://amphibiaweb.org/cgi/amphib_query?where-genus=phyllobates&where-species=terribilis photo:wikipedia 9/
Phyllobates terribilis is thought to be the most poisonous terrestrial vertebrate and secretes enormous amounts of alkaloids known as batrachotoxins from the skin https://science.sciencemag.org/content/208/4450/1383 10/
The species description drew on Malkin's anthropology background to include descriptions of how the indigenous ChocĂł people use these frogs for hunting & detailed instructions for constructing & using blowguns http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/1286 11/
So, there you have it. A book that belonged to a soldier & scientist now resides on my shelf - still being used - still inspiring the study of natural history. 12/
