'Dry Store Room No. 1' is an intimate biography of the Natural History Museum, celebrating the eccentric personalities who have peopled it and capturing the wonders of scientific endeavour, academic rigour and imagination. 'This book is a kind of museum of the mind. It is my own collection, a personal archive, designed to explain what goes on behind the polished doors in the Natural History Museum. The lustre of a museum does not depend only on the artefacts or objects it contains - the people who work out of sight are what keeps a museum alive...I want to bring those invisible people into the sunlight.' Behind the public façade of any great museum there lies a secret domain: one of unseen galleries, locked doors, priceless specimens and hidden lives. Through the stories of the numerous eccentric individuals whose long careers have left their mark on the study of evolutionary science, Richard Fortey, former senior paleaontologist at London's Natural History Museum, celebrates the pioneering work of the Museum from its inception to the present day. He delves into the feuds, affairs, scandals and skulduggery that have punctuated its long history, and formed a backdrop to extraordinary scientific endeavour. He explores the staying power and adaptability of the Museum as it responds to changes wrought by advances in technology and molecular biology - 'spare' bones from an extinct giant bird suddenly become cutting-edge science with the new knowledge that DNA can be extracted from them, and ancient fish are tested with the latest equipment that is able to measure rises in pollution. 'Dry Store Room No. 1' is a fascinating and affectionate account of a hidden world of untold treasures, where every fragment tells a story about time past, by a scientist who combines rigorous professional learning with a gift for prose that sparkles with wit and literary sensibility.

A remarkable behind-the-scenes look at the extraordinary people, meticulous research, and driving passions that make London’s Natural History Museum one of the world’s greatest institutions. In an elegant and illuminating narrative, Richard Fortey takes his readers to a place where only a few privileged scientists, curators, and research specialists have been—the hallowed halls that hold the permanent collection of the Natural History Museum. Replete with fossils, jewels, rare plants, and exotic species, Fortey’s walk through offers an intimate view of many of the premiere scientific accomplishments of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Like looking into the mind of mankind and all the fascinating discoveries, ideas, and accomplishments that reside there, Fortey’s tour is utterly entertaining from first to last.

Natural history museums have evolved from being little more than musty repositories of stuffed animals and pinned bugs, to being crucial generators of new scientific knowledge. They have also become vibrant educational centers, full of engaging exhibits that share those discoveries with students and an enthusiastic general public. Grande offers a portrait of curators and their research, conveying the intellectual excitement and the educational and social value of curation. He uses the personal story of his own career-- most of it spent at Chicago's Field Museum-- to explore the value of research and collections, the importance of public engagement, changing ecological and ethical considerations, and the impact of rapidly improving technology.

This ebook edition does not include illustrations. An awe-inspiring journey through the eons and across the globe, in search of visible traces of evolution in the living creatures which have survived from earlier times and whose stories speak to us of seminal events in the history of life.

From the author of Earth: An Intimate History, an exuberant "biography" of four acres of woodland, evoking a cosmos of living and inanimate things and imagining its millennia of existence A few years ago, award-winning scientist Richard Fortey purchased four acres of woodland in the Chiltern Hills of Oxfordshire, England. The Wood for the Trees is the joyful, lyrical portrait of what he found there. With one chapter for each month, we move through the seasons: tree felling in January, moth hunting in June, finding golden mushrooms in September. Fortey, along with the occasional expert friend, investigates the forest top to bottom, discovering a new species and explaining the myriad connections that tie us to nature and nature to itself. His textured, evocative prose and gentle humor illuminate the epic story of a small forest. But he doesn't stop at mere observation. The Wood for the Trees uses the forest as a springboard back through time, full of rich and unexpected tales of the people, plants, and animals that once called the land home. With Fortey's help, we come to see a universe in miniature.

By one of Britain's most gifted scientists: a magnificently daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big bang" to the advent of man), based entirely on the most original of all sources--the evidence of fossils. With excitement and driving intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before the debut of Homo sapiens. Ranging across multiple scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose their findings and arguments--about the origins of life, the causes of species extinctions and the first appearance of man--Fortey weaves this history out of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why certain ideas won. Brimful of wit, fascinating personal experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet to the complex history of life on Earth. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection With 32 pages of photographs

This introduction offers an explanation of how fossils are a product of our evolving habitat. The emphasis is on what paleontology is really about, how the paleontologist tries to find out the ways in which fossil animals lived and how geological processes have interacted with the history of life.

An American Library Association Notable Book When he proposed to his girlfriend, Tom Zoellner gave what is expected of every American man--a diamond engagement ring. But when the relationship broke apart, he was left with a used diamond that began to haunt him. His obsession carried him around the globe; from the "blood diamond" rings of Africa; to the sweltering polishing factories of India; to mines above the Arctic Circle; to illegal diggings in Brazil; to the London headquarters of De Beers, the secretive global colossus that has dominated the industry for more than a century and permanently carved the phrase "A diamond is forever" on the psyche. An adventure story in the tradition of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, The Heartless Stone is a voyage into the cold heart of the world's most unyielding gem.

From one of the world’s leading natural scientists and the acclaimed author of Trilobite!, Life: A Natural History of Four Billion Years of Life on Earth and Dry Storeroom No. 1 comes a fascinating chronicle of life’s history told not through the fossil record but through the stories of organisms that have survived, almost unchanged, throughout time. Evolution, it seems, has not completely obliterated its tracks as more advanced organisms have evolved; the history of life on earth is far older—and odder—than many of us realize. Scattered across the globe, these remarkable plants and animals continue to mark seminal events in geological time. From a moonlit beach in Delaware, where the hardy horseshoe crab shuffles its way to a frenzy of mass mating just as it did 450 million years ago, to the dense rainforests of New Zealand, where the elusive, unprepossessing velvet worm has burrowed deep into rotting timber since before the breakup of the ancient supercontinent, to a stretch of Australian coastline with stromatolite formations that bear witness to the Precambrian dawn, the existence of these survivors offers us a tantalizing glimpse of pivotal points in evolutionary history. These are not “living fossils” but rather a handful of tenacious creatures of days long gone. Written in buoyant, sparkling prose, Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms is a marvelously captivating exploration of the world’s old-timers combining the very best of science writing with an explorer’s sense of adventure and wonder.

A Pollan-esque look at the truth about wheat, with surprising insights on the advantages of eating the world’s most contested grain You owe it to your mind and body to step away from the gluten-free frenzy long enough to do what’s best for your own personal health. Once you separate fad from fact you’ll quickly discover the answer: whole grains, including wheat. Most recently, a Harvard School of Public Health long-term study that followed 117, 500 men and women over a 25-year span revealed that people who eat a whole grain-rich diet lower their risk of cardiovascular disease by 20 percent, and increase their lifespan at least 6 percent. No other food produces similar results. As for the gluten found in wheat, rye and barley—at most six out of a hundred of us have any real problem with it, and less than one percent of us, with celiac disease, cannot tolerate it in any form. So why has wheat become the new asbestos? Why are the shelves of every grocery store and supermarket in America heaped high with gluten-free products? That’s what Stephen Yafa sets out to discover in Grain of Truth—a book drawn in part from personal experience that is as entertaining as it is informative. After hundreds of interviews with food scientists, gluten-sensitive individuals, bakers, nutritionists, gastroenterologists and others, he finds that indeed there is indeed a culprit. But it’s not wheat. It’s not gluten. It’s the way that grain is milled and processed by large industrial manufacturers and bakeries. That discovery spurs him to search out growers, millers and bakers who deliver whole wheat to us the way it was meant to be: naturally fermented, with all parts, bran, germ, and white endosperm intact. Yafa finds a thriving local grain movement gaining strength across the country, much as the organic movement did a few decades back. And as he apprentices with local artisan bakers and make his own sourdough breads at home he learns something that few of us know: naturally fermented over two days, as opposed to four hours in commercial bakeries, whole wheat is easily digested by the vast majority of us, including many who consider themselves gluten-sensitive. The long fermentation processing method breaks down these bulky gluten proteins into tiny fragments while slowing the conversion rate of starch to sugar in our bloodstream. Along the way Grain of Truth challenges many common myths. Yafa shows us the science that proves a gluten-free diet doesn’t lead to weight loss and that it isn't healthier in any way. He counters common assumptions that modern wheat has been genetically manipulated to contain more gluten, and he point out that despite much web chatter to the contrary, there is no GMO wheat. Those are only some of the reasons that Grain of Truth offers a badly needed fact-based response to anti-wheat hysteria. It also offers an ingredient in short supply these days—common sense, measured out with just enough savvy and substance to make you reconsider what's best for you—and to help you find a healthy answer in real, delicious food. For readers of Salt Sugar Fat and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Grain of Truth smoothly blends science, history, biology, economics, and nutrition to give us back our daily bread.