Curiosities from the Cabinet

<p><em>Curiosities from the Cabinet </em>features 36 museum objects including an ancient Babylonian tablet a 21st-century webpage a skeleton marionette and a colony of live ants found in UK museums from Weston-super-Mare to the Shetland Islands. Over 40 people from inside and outside the museum world – curators conservators visitors users artists – talk about these objects with knowledge passion and even tenderness.</p><p>We listen as British Museum Assyriologist Irving Finkel explains the oldest known map of the world; David Kohn of the American Museum of Natural History describes how Darwin's weed garden contributed to<em> On the Origin of Species</em>; and novelist and ‘Janeite’ Cindy Jones spins her own story around Jane Austen’s writing table. This book will inform and intrigue anyone who likes visiting museums.</p>