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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Science museums can be illuminating, exciting, and disturbing--just like the collectors that make them possible. In Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums Scholar Stephen T. Asma turns his professional curiosity about preserving bodies into an engrossing, wide-ranging exploration of the nature of these places and their curators. He brings a refreshing vitality to a subject usually thought boring, if not morbid. Asma's writing ranges from expositive to chatty and occasionally feels like a travelogue or memoir as he investigates the American Museum of Natural History, the Galerie d'anatomie comparée, and other collections in the US and Europe; this informality keeps the reader engaged throughout. Referring to the process of skeletonising specimens--while maintaining his hold on all but the most sensitive--he writes:
I stepped into the foulest, most pestiferous stench you can imagine ... Inside each tank were thousands of dermestid beetles, otherwise known as flesh-eating beetles, blissfully chewing the meaty chunks and strands off the bones. Each bug was no bigger than a watermelon seed, but en masse they could strip a skeleton clean in two short days.To Asma's credit, the bulk of the text is less a gross-out festival than a consideration of the hard, sometimes obsessive work of the men and women behind the displays. He examines the role of museums and collectors in the great evolutionary debates of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the future of these institutions as they come more and more to depend on corporate largesse. Equally enlightening and entertaining, Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads is a perfectly exhibited specimen. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"After reading this book museum-goers will not be able to look at exhibits in the same way again", avows the author. He could be right New Scientist As full of curious facts and mental treats as any museum display, this fascinating book shows there is more behind the museum facade than a few busy biologists New Scientist
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
COLLECTING AND DISPLAYING natural history specimens is a more complex and dramatic activity than most museum visitors appreciate. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
COLLECTING AND DISPLAYING natural history specimens is a more complex and dramatic activity than most museum visitors appreciate. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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