Very few historians have written about Anthropology Days at length. For the most part, it comes up on Olympic history timelines as one of the wackier factoids that get rolled out every four years, alongside phased-out sports like croquet and tug-of-war. Several Olympics and World's Fair encyclopedias have nice little break-outs—John Findling and Kimberly Pelle's Encyclopedia of the Olympic Movement and Robert Rydell's All The World's a Fair, are particularly useful. S.W. Pope's Patriotic Games and George R. Matthews' America's First Olympics do a nice job putting this historical absurdity into its particularly American cultural context. (Baron de Coubertin wrote that such a farce could only take place in America). For sheer readability, check out the detailed and funny account in Mark Dryerson's Making the American Team.

Oddly enough, all of these accounts differ significantly, particularly on the issue of whether Special Olympics participants were paid. Most say the winners won nothing but an American flag. A couple of others give figures ranging from $3 to an improbable $50. These disagreements are most likely the result of some lazy reporting that took place during the events themselves.

The only book I've found that focuses on the Anthropology Days themselves is the excellent Anthropology Goes to the Fair, by anthropologists Janet Parezo and Don Fowler. Parezo and Fowler rely heavily on accounts from the event's organizers, an approach that gives a good sense of what the athletes themselves must have thought about the whole thing and turns what purports to be a history of outmoded intellectual practices into a surprisingly ripping yarn. Another book, called The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games, comes out this December; it should be the first to take on issues of imperialism and anthropology and race and those sorts of things at book length.