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The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
Knopf
August 2008
On Sale: August 19, 2008
352 pages ISBN: 0307263622 EAN: 9780307263629 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Richard Fortey-one of the world-s most gifted natural
scientists and acclaimed author of Life, Trilobite and
Earth-describes this splendid new book as a museum of the
mind. But it is, as well, a perfect behind-the-scenes guide
to a legendary place. Within its pages, London-s Natural
History Museum, a home of treasures-plants from the voyage
of Captain Cook, barnacles to which Charles Darwin devoted
years of study, hidden accursed jewels-pulses with life and
miraculous surprises. In an elegant and illuminating
narrative, Fortey acquaints the reader with the
extraordinary people, meticulous research and driving
passions that helped to create the timeless experiences of
wonder that fill the museum. And with the museum-s hallways
and collection rooms providing a dazzling framework, Fortey
offers an often eye-opening social history of the
scientific accomplishments of the nineteenth, twentieth and
twenty-first centuries. Fortey-s scholarship dances with
wit. Here is a book that is utterly entertaining from its
first page to its last. --This text refers to the Kindle
Edition edition.
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