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Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
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Average Rating:  out of 4 Reviews
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Price: $27.50
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Sale: $16.05
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Manufacturer: Knopf
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780307263629
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Richard Fortey
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Publisher: Knopf
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Dewey Decimal Number: 508.07442134
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Publication Date: 2008-08-19
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Reading Level: 352
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Description: 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.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: The Museum, the Scientists and their Specimens |
Date: 2008-10-08 |
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Details: About a month ago, (September 2008) I had a chance to hear Richard Fortey himself lecturing about this book. The lecture, very fittingly, was happening in a natural history museum. As his lecture unfolded, I found myself with many of the most interesting characters that have ever contributed to natural history, both famous and obscure. I also learned about what goes on behind the scenes of the museum, and of some of the many interesting and strange specimens which are not on display, such as an "accursed amethyst" and the famous rock from Mars which is said by some to contain fossils. After the lecture was over, I went home and started reading the book, and found the written account of these things and people to be just as engaging as it was to hear Richard Fortey speaking. It is like recieving your own guided tour through the Natural History Museum of London, and even through the history of natural history. Richard Fortey shows that scientists can be very eccentric and unusual characters, in spite of their stereotype of being very dry and boring. All in all, this is an excellent book which chronicles the history of the museum, the people who make it go, and the specimens which are stored inside it. I recommend this book to anyone who has wondered what goes on inside the hearts of museums, and also to people who are interested in natural history. You will finish this book knowing much about the "behind the scenes" of museums. |
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Review Summary: Night at the museum with a personal tour guide |
Date: 2008-09-20 |
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Details: Behind-the-scenes look at London's Natural History Museum is an interesting peak at the "coalface"--Fortey's term for the daily work occurring beyond and below the public galleries--of museum science. Fortey describes the main work of the Museum, and its sister institutions in other countries, as systematic taxonomy--the attempt to exhaustively categorize and collect reference examples of each species of plant, animal, and mineral.
In an era of hard-to-obtain research grants and declining public funding, Fortey defends this work as valuable for several reasons:
--the need to find and identify species before they are destroyed by climate change, environmental destruction, or over-harvesting.
--potential beneficial uses of unknown species for the biosphere, for example expanded use of natural predators as environmentally-safe pesticides.
--helping future scientific endeavors by placing each species in its proper place in the taxonomy.
--and ultimately, the pure aesthetic satisfaction of knowing everything we can know about the world in which we live and upon which we are dependent.
Fortey spends time walking the reader virtually through the hidden corridors of each section of the Museum and using the discussion of the physical surroundings to talk in layman's terms about the science and the history of the science. Black-and-white photos in the pages with the text and color plates in the center of the book illustrate the surroundings and the collection as Fortey describes them.
But most interesting are the people who work behind the scenes. The current and past scientists, curators, clerks, Keepers, Directors, and Trustees are a diverse, intelligent, and intensely fascinating lot. After describing some of the more legendary polymaths who seemed as if they would scarcely have time to indulge in their many interests, Fortey asks in wonderment: "Are we lesser people today, or do we expect less of ourselves?"
Of course the Museum also has its share of misfits, misanthropes, recluses, shysters, and just plain crazy people deep in the hallways behind the public galleries, and Fortey seems to take special glee in describing them, many of whom he knew personally from his 30-plus years in the corridors. He writes with an understated, decidedly British wit and language. I'm guessing I missed some of his best jokes as they glanced off my tin American ear, but unless you get the opportunity to tour the hallways (which he compares to the phantasmagorical and never-ending castle in the The Gormenghast Novels) with Fortey in person, this book will be your personal tour guide. |
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Review Summary: Museums and Their Back Rooms |
Date: 2008-09-18 |
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Details: If you like visiting museums and you've ever wondered what goes on behind the displays and doors marked 'Employees Only', this is the book for you! It gives the reader a fascinating insight into how museums collect, exhibit, and store items, many of which never hit the public eye. The book is well worth reading. The insight into England's 'Natural History Museum' has a lot of stories of how it works, how it got its collections, how it maintains and exhibits them, who works there and why, how science has evolved over the years - all kinds of very interesting, miscellaneous things. |
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Review Summary: Secret Life of Natural History Museum |
Date: 2008-09-08 |
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Details: This volume would be useful for patrons of the
Natural History Museum . i.e. London or New York
The book has extensive photographs of artifacts;
such as, a Martian meteorite (igneous rock formation).
There are memorable pictures of a giant plant-eating
dinosaur, the extinct moa (world's largest bird),
a duck-billed platypus and many other fossils of
yesteryear.
The volume would make a perfect gift for the student
in your house.
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