Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum - Hardcover

Fortey, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307263622 ISBN 13: 9780307263629

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

`Sneaking behind the scenes with the glee of a child... there is plenty of solid science, elucidated with flair'

From the Publisher:

Richard Fortey's previous book `The Earth' and `Life' were shortlisted for the Aventis (Rhone-Poulenc) Prize for Science and `Trilobite!' was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0307263622
• ISBN 13: 9780307263629
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 335