Book Review: Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads
their cash. (In Chapter 1, Asma even mentions the use of the "nag factor" by toy manufacturers and museums alike as a way to use small, nagging children to drag their parents or grandparents to museums, shopping malls, or fast food restaurants, where they can spend their money.) Asma discusses how the purchase of the skeleton of Sue the T. rex necessitated the teaming of the Chicago Field Museum with Walt Disney and McDonald's in order to pay the $8 million price tag.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, despite the somewhat sickening passages in some places (as a paleontologist and biologist, I have had to develop a strong stomach!). My husband and I always love exploring natural history museums wherever we discover them, and reading Asma's reactions to the many things he and his wife saw in the museums they visited piqued my interest to visit some of the more obscure museums.
Asma is a Professor of Philosophy, and there were times when I found his digressions into philosophy and psychology a bit unnecessary and distracting. He spends some time in Chapter 1 discussing theories of why humans feel a need to collect things, including a long discussion into Sigmund Freud's hypotheses. Another long digression in Chapter 3 involves art history and the development of artistic techniques to show perspective; while interesting, it could have easily been omitted without detracting from the book's content. He also includes a rather bizarre discussion of what the buffalo was believed to be like, based on contemporary historical accounts. These descriptions read like something from a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual! Although interesting, this section could have also been easily omitted. I sometimes got the impression that Asma had come upon these tidbits during his research and could not bear to leave them out of the book.
Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads is full of photographs and line drawings that illustrate the different museums explored in the book. If nothing else, this book should definitely whet the appetite of the reader to visit some of the museums mentioned, or perhaps a local natural history museum.
It is a great idea to become a member of your local natural history museum. Membership usually includes free or reduced admission to the museum and special events (often invitation to members-only events), as well as a discount at the museum gift shop. You will usually receive a calendar of upcoming
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