false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180939738m/1096222.jpg 1096222 2 Science museums can be illuminating, exciting, and disturbing--just like the collectors that make them possible. Scholar Stephen T. Asma turned his professional curiosity about preserving bodies into an engrossing, wide-ranging exploration of the nature of these places and their curators. <I>Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums</I> brings a refreshing vitality to a subject usually thought boring, if not morbid. Asma's writing ranges from expositive to chatty, and it 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 U.S. and Europe. This informality keeps the reader engaged throughout. Referring to the process of skeletonizing specimens--while maintaining his hold on all but the most sensitive--he writes:<p> <blockquote> 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. </blockquote><p> To Asma's credit, the bulk of the text is less a gross-out fest 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, <I>Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads</I> is a perfectly exhibited specimen. <I>--Rob Lightner</I> 1083060 2001 Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums total:52|5:5|4:28|3:15|2:4|1:0| 52 190 117 11 566025 0195130502 9780195130508 11 4 3.65 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175849305m/566025.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/566025.Stuffed_Animals_and_Pickled_Heads_The_Culture_of_Natural_History_Museums 4 0 false Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 10:31:07 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 10:40:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 566025 0195130502 9780195130508 11 4 3.65 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175849305m/566025.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/566025.Stuffed_Animals_and_Pickled_Heads_The_Culture_of_Natural_History_Museums 4 0 false Tue Jul 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 13:12:44 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 14:01:04 -0700 2009 Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, I certainly don't remember it. 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