The Book of Fishes; Game Fishes, Food Fishes, Shellfish and Curious Citizens of American Ocean Shores, Lakes and Rivers

Washington DC: The National Geographic Society, 1924. Presumed First Edition/First Printing thus. Hardcover. Good. Hashime Murayama. [10], 243, [3] pages. With 134 Illustrations. Color Plates of 92 Familiar Salt and Fresh-Water Fishes. Individual sections have copyrights from 1912, 1913, 1919, 1921, 1922, and 1923. Extensive Biographies of designated fishes familiar to American waters. Index. Some endpaper foxing. Cover has some wear and soiling. This includes sections by John Oliver La Gorce, Charles Haskins Townsend, Louis L. Mowbray, John T. Nichols, Hugh M. Smith, and Frederick William Wallace. John Oliver La Gorce (1880-1959) was an American writer and explorer known for his work in the National Geographic Society. He served as Associate Editor of the Society from 1905 to 1922, Vice President from 1922 to 1954, and President from 1954 to 1957, before retiring at the age of 77. He also write many articles for the Magazine. His biggest interest was perhaps in fishes, and in 1919 he participated in a hunt that brought in a 22-foot manta ray, the world's biggest to date. He also helped produce the world's first underwater photographs in 1926, and edited all versions of the National Geographic's The Book of Fishes.

Charles Haskins Townsend, Sc.D. (September 29, 1859 - January 28, 1944) was an American zoologist. In 1883, he became assistant United States Fish Commissioner in charge of salmon propagation in California. For a time, he was in charge of deep-sea explorations on the USS Albatross.[3] From 1897 to 1902, he served as chief of the Fish Commission's fisheries division. He then served as director of the New York Aquarium at Castle Garden, from 1902 until his retirement in 1937.

Louis Leon Arthur Mowbray was a Bermudian naturalist. Louis Leon Arthur Mowbray was hired by the Bermuda Natural History Society as director for Bermuda's first aquarium. In 1911 he became director of the South Boston Aquarium which he ran for three years. In 1914, he became superintendent of the New York Aquarium. In 1928 he became director of the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo which he ran until 1944. Mowbray successfully bred the first Galapagos tortoises and Galapagos penguins in captivity.

During John Treadwell Nichols' career at the American Museum of Natural History, he not only over-saw the development of the Department of Herpetology and Ichthyology when it was organized in 1909, but he became the first curator of the newly separated Department of Ichthyology in 1919 after Bashford Dean stepped down. In addition, Nichols founded the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH) and its journal, Copeia, out of his small office here in 1913 while still in his twenties.

Hugh McCormick Smith, also H. M. Smith (November 21, 1865 - September 28, 1941) was an American ichthyologist and administrator in the Bureau of Fisheries. He began working for the U. S. Fish Commission in 1886. He directed the scientific research centre there from 1897 to 1903. From 1901 to 1902, he directed the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. From 1907—1910 he led the Philippine Expedition aboard the USS Albatross. He was an associate editor of the National Geographic Society from 1909 to 1919. He was the author of many publications about fish. He was deputy commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (1903—1913) and then commissioner (1913—1922). From 1933 he was curator of zoology at the Smithsonian Institution until 1941.

Frederick William Wallace (11 December 1886 - 15 July 1958) was a journalist, photographer, historian and novelist. He edited the monthly journal Canadian Fisherman for forty years. This publication, which ran from 1917 to 1970, remains an important source of information for researchers today.

Hashime Murayama (1879-1954) was a Japanese American painter. He was best known for his exquisite paintings of birds, insects, fish, mammals, and other wildlife. His work was featured in The National Geographic Magazine from 1921 to 1941. As an artist at National Geographic, he paid meticulous attention to his drawings, adding his distinct style to them and making them instantly popular. Fish were his personal favorites. To get sources from which to study, he kept bug specimens in a jar and visited aquariums to look at frogs, trout and salmon. After a career of over twenty years as an artist, Murayama was fired in September 1941 for being an immigrant (and because Japan-United States relations were about to be severed due to the attack on Pearl Harbor) and placed under arrest.