Book Review: Museum für Naturkunde: The Exhibitions by Gesine Steiner, et al.

 

If you know me, you know I love the subject of nature, natural history and taxidermy. So this makes me visiting natural history museums when and where I can a regular occurrence. Recently I visited the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, and purchased this book in the gift shop thereafter. Let's have a look.

This non-fiction book basically takes us through a tour of the museum (for me, once again). Each chapter is dedicated to a different exhibition, and it gives us various types of information for each exhibition and sometimes for individual specimens on display, such as dinosaur skeletons, gem collections or wet specimens. 

Some of the information in this book overlaps with what is shown on the little signs in front of each specimen, however there's also various times where the book goes more in-depth, such as delving into the museum's or specimen's history or where it came from. It obviously cannot cover every single specimen (with there being many thousands on display), but quite a few major or interesting ones are highlighted and given extra information.

Yeah, a neat book! Granted, I think you'll get more out of this if you have visited the museum than if you haven't, but should you not have seen any of the exhibitions, you won't be completely lost. I just think that it adds more to the overall experience having seen these things in person.

It's a cool book, pretty straight to the point but also with enough new information to keep the reader satisfied. Quite a few specimens are featured and getting some extra context and information on them was super neat. There's also a lot of photos in this, so the reader will never be bored, plus it's a nice bonus because it gives us a better look at some specimens (which are mostly inside glass cabinets).

It does have a few typos (at least the English version I read) but to me it wasn't a huge distraction.

I really don't have much more to say about it. A really neat look at the exhibitions with more context and a lot of clear pictures. I'm glad I got to re-experience the exhibits like this on my train ride back home from Berlin.

Rating: 4/5