Rarest of the Rare: The Stories Behind the Harvard Museum of Natural History - Softcover

Pick, Nancy; Sloan, Mark; Wilson, Edward O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785510118 ISBN 13: 9781785510113

Publisher: Scala Arts Publishers Inc., 2015

Synopsis

Where do you find Nabokov's butterflies, George Washington's pheasants, and the only stuffed bird remaining from the Lewis and Clark expedition? The vast collections of animals, minerals, and plants at the Harvard Museum of Natural History are among the oldest in the country, dating back to the 1700s.

    In the words of Edward O. Wilson, the museum stands as both "cabinet of wonder and temple of science." Its rich and unlikely history involves literary figures, creationists, millionaires, and visionary scientists from Asa Gray to Stephen Jay Gould. Its mastodon skeleton--still on display--is even linked to one of the nineteenth century's most bizarre and notorious murders.

     The Rarest of the Rare tells the fascinating stories behind the extinct butterflies, rare birds, lost plants, dazzling meteorites, and other scientific and historic specimens that fill the museum's halls. The book describes the painting that catches Audubon in a shameful lie, the sand dollar collected by Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle, and dozens of other treasures in this surprising, informative, and often amusing tour of the natural world.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy Pick, a former staff writer for the Harvard Museum of Natural History, is the author of Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks at Amherst College.
   

Photographer Mark Sloan is the author of Wild, Weird, and Wonderful: The American Circus 1901-1927 as Seen by F.W. Glasier, and co-author of three other books. He is the director of the Halsey Gallery at the College of Charleston School of the Arts. 
     

Edward O. Wilson, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the author of many bestselling books, including Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge and The Diversity of Life. He is currently Pellegrino University Research Professor and Honorary Curator in Entomology of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Reviews

Rather like a natural history museum, this book contains arresting  visuals and intriguing facts but has a vaguely musty air about it. Pick,  a staff writer for the Harvard Museum of Natural History, traces the  growth of the institution and the accretion of its millions of animal,  vegetable, fossil and mineral specimens, asserting the continuing  relevance of collecting and studying whole organisms in this age of  molecular biology. (As Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson writes in  the introduction, "Biology could not have advanced without the  collections of museums like this one.") The bulk of the book is devoted  to photographs of flora and fauna (or rather, their taxidermied or  fossilized remains), accompanied by matter-of-fact commentary about  their biology or provenance. Stuffed birds, pickled turtle embryos and  tapeworms taken from the intestinal tracts of "upper-crust Bostonians"  share space with a haunting fossil butterfly and an awesome  plesiosaur skull. Other relics, though, fail to impress: Vladimir  Nabokov's collection of butterfly genitalia, for instance, probably  needs to be seen in person. The most interesting sections are those  that delve into the science behind the specimens, such as the mini-  essays on exotic animals and the physics of blue coloration, but  these, too, are cursory and rare. 95 color photos not seen by PW.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable  edition of this title.

A sampling from the 20 million specimens closeted at the Harvard  Museum of Natural History, the several dozen plants, animals, and  minerals presented here were selected for their connections to  interesting tales. The associations are sometimes either famous or  bizarre, such as a woodpecker collected by Meriwether Lewis or a  mastodon skeleton acquired by a Harvard professor hanged for the  1849 murder of a fellow don. Pick's choices, however, stem from the  desire to depict her institution's two-century-long role in the history  of biology. E. O. Wilson's introduction details the course of natural  history from taxonomic description to molecular biology to evolutionary  biology; Pick prefaces the main text with an essay detailing the  fluctuations in the museum's reputation. Aided by Sloan's excellent  photographs, Pick then groups specimens into extinct species, species  discovered by museum scientists, or specimens studied by world-  famous Harvard scientists such as Ernst Mayr and the late Stephen  Jay Gould. This work is a beautiful showcase that will arrest the  interest of every passing browser. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text  refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scala Arts Publishers Inc.
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1785510118
• ISBN 13: 9781785510113
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208