Purchase
The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
Knopf
August 2008
On Sale: August 19, 2008
352 pages
ISBN: 0307263622
EAN: 9780307263629
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
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.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - September 23, 2008
| 
© 2003-2026