Finalist for Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Pronged ants, horned humans, a landscape carved on a fruit pit--some of the displays in David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology are hoaxes. But which ones? As he guides readers through an intellectual hall of mirrors, Lawrence Weschler revisits the 16th-century "wonder cabinets" that were the first museums and compels readers to examine the imaginative origins of both art and science.

Taking its inspiration from the wonder and curiosity cabinets of the late Renaissance, David Barber's second book of poems offers itself up as an eclectic gallery of natural marvels and historical gleanings. Creation is Barber's chief subject and he often concentrates on how human nature is constantly seeking to impose definition and significance upon the natural world. These are poems that meditate on all manner of wondrous phenomena: falconry and funiculars; the knotted quipus of the Inca Empire and the tulip mania of the Dutch Golden Age; the lore and language of field guides, epitaphs, beekeeping, and seafaring; the ghostly vestiges of the La Brea tar pits and the ancient library of Alexandria. Then, in an innovative suite of "New World Sutras" composed in haiku stanzas, Barber riffs on the American genius for self-invention and epic ambition by calling up landmark figures such as Audubon, Houdini, Babe Ruth, and Buster Keaton. With a formal and verbal precision that is rife with agile music, avid wordplay, and mordant wit, Barber delves deeply into the realms of both natural history and popular culture.

Exhibition held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 13 November 2001 to 3 February 2002.

Marie Rutkoski's startling debut novel, the first book in the Kronos Chronicles, about the risks we take to protect those we love, brims with magic, political intrigue, and heroism. Petra Kronos has a simple, happy life. But it's never been ordinary. She has a pet tin spider named Astrophil who likes to hide in her snarled hair and give her advice. Her best friend can trap lightning inside a glass sphere. Petra also has a father in faraway Prague who is able to move metal with his mind. He has been commissioned by the prince of Bohemia to build the world's finest astronomical clock. Petra's life is forever changed when, one day, her father returns home – blind. The prince has stolen his eyes, enchanted them, and now wears them. But why? Petra doesn't know, but she knows this: she will go to Prague, sneak into Salamander Castle, and steal her father's eyes back. Joining forces with Neel, whose fingers extend into invisible ghosts that pick locks and pockets, Petra finds that many people in the castle are not what they seem, and that her father's clock has powers capable of destroying their world. The Cabinet of Wonders is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Ian Wallace, one of Canada’s best-known children’s book creators, invites us to look inside his cabinet of curiosities, which contains treasures from his decades of traveling the country from sea to sea to sea, sharing stories with young readers. Over the past forty years, Ian Wallace has made thousands of school and library visits in tiny communities, towns and huge cities all across this land. Some of these visits have inspired young readers to become artists themselves; others have moved children to speak or act in new ways; others have simply given rise to the laughter and sheer delight that come from a good book. In return, Ian has been the recipient of many gifts himself, from the wide range of experiences he has had to the mementos made by young children or artists in the communities he has visited. All these gifts come together in his cabinet of curiosities — an eclectic and personal collection that nonetheless represents and appreciates our rich and varied land. Each double-page illustration shows a shelf in the cabinet dedicated to a province or territory with the gifts or special memories Ian has from that place — tamarack geese made by Cree artists in northern Ontario, a fishing-stage facade from Newfoundland, the giant Douglas fir trees in Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island, and much more. Always experimenting with new techniques, Ian has illustrated the entire book in delicate graphite pencil, achieving stunning light and shadow. This is a beautiful and unusual contribution to Canada’s 150th birthday. Key Text Features table of contents introduction illustrator’s notes references Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.1 With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

"This masterful work positions Lu among the vanguard of contemporary futurism and speculative fiction."—Publishers Weekly, starred review In the tradition of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, debut author S. Qiouyi Lu has written a multifaceted story of borders, power, diaspora, and transformation with In the Watchful City. The city of Ora is watching. Anima is an extrasensory human tasked with surveilling and protecting Ora’s citizens via a complex living network called the Gleaming. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from harm. When a mysterious outsider enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around with the world with a story attached to each item, Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—æ never before imagined to exist. But such knowledge leaves Anima with a question that throws into doubt ær entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

For the first time, the pioneering book that launched the study of art and curiosity cabinets is available in English. Julius von Schlosser’s Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance (Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance) is a seminal work in the history of art and collecting. Originally published in German in 1908, it was the first study to interpret sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cabinets of wonder as precursors to the modern museum, situating them within a history of collecting going back to Greco-Roman antiquity. In its comparative approach and broad geographical scope, Schlosser’s book introduced an interdisciplinary and global perspective to the study of art and material culture, laying the foundation for museum studies and the history of collections. Schlosser was an Austrian professor, curator, museum director, and leading figure of the Vienna School of art history whose work has not achieved the prominence of his contemporaries until now. This eloquent and informed translation is preceded by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s substantial introduction. Tracing Schlosser’s biography and intellectual formation in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, it contextualizes his work among that of his contemporaries, offering a wealth of insights along the way.

“[An] epic, atomic history of the Steel City . . . a work of literature, a series of linked creative nonfiction essays, an historical story cycle.” ―Phillip Maciak, Los Angeles Review of Books The land surrounding the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers has supported communities of humans for millennia. Over the past four centuries, however, it has been transformed countless times by the many people who call it home. In this brief, lyrical, and idiosyncratic collection, Ed Simon, a staff writer at The Millions, follows the story of Pittsburgh through a series of interconnected segments, covering all manner of beloved people, places, and things, including: • Paleolithic Pittsburgh • The Whiskey Rebellion • The attempted assassination of Henry Frick • The Harmonists • The Mystery, Pittsburgh’s radical, Black nationalist newspaper • The myth of Joe Magarac • Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Andy Warhol, and much, much more. Accessible and funny, An Alternative History of Pittsburgh is a must-read for anyone curious about this storied city, and for Pittsburghers who think they know it all too well already. “[A] rich and idiosyncratic history . . . Even Pittsburgh history buffs will learn something new.” —Publishers Weekly “Simon tells the story of the city and all the changes that made it what it is today in a way that's entirely new, by the hand of someone who is deeply familiar.” ―Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek “A sparkling new take on everyone’s favorite Rust Belt metropolis.” ―Justin Velluci, Jewish Chronicle “A brilliant look at how geology and art, politics and religion, disaster and luck combine to build America’s great cities―one that will leave you wondering what secrets your own hometown might be hiding.” ―Anjali Sachdeva, author of All the Names They Used for God

Translation of Cabinets de curiosites, published in Paris by Martiniere in 2011.