Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natual History Museum.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review).

Fortey, senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London and author (Life, 1999; Trilobite! 2000), here turns his eye to the inner workings of a natural history museum. Though a paleontologist and an expert on trilobites, Fortey looks at all of the major departments of the museum, examining how they work, providing brief backgrounds on the sciences themselves, and telling stories of many of the museum's scientists both past and present. Explaining how science works through his stories from the museum, Fortey tells of truffles and how they illustrate the science of taxonomy; the Piltdown Man fraud and how more modern techniques exposed the hoax; how one of the ichthyologists found a lost Mozart manuscript while searching for a sixteenth-century book's illustration of a herring; and how the "First Law of Museums"--never throw anything away--turned up a cast of the Koh-i-noor diamond made before it was recut. Well illustrated with photos, this chatty book meanders from tale to tale in the endlessly fascinating manner of a good storyteller. Nancy Bent

YA: Teens will be engaged by the eccentric scientists and the tidbits of scientific inquiry. NB.

Named Works: Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (Book) Book reviews

Source Citation:Bent, Nancy. "Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natual History Museum.(Young adult review)(Brief article)(Book review)." Booklist 104.22 (August 1, 2008): 19(1). General OneFile. Gale. Alachua County Library District. 6 Sept. 2009
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