Museum History

Each of us has an ever-growing collection of personal digital data: documents, photographs, PowerPoint presentations, videos, music, emails, and texts sent and received. To access any of this, we have to find it. The ease (or difficulty) of finding something depends on how we organize our digital stuff.

The dream of capturing and organizing knowledge is as old as history. From the archives of ancient Sumeria and the Library of Alexandria to the Library of Congress and Wikipedia, humanity has wrestled with the problem of harnessing its intellectual output. The timeless quest for wisdom has been as much about information storage and retrieval as creative genius. In Cataloging the World, Alex Wright introduces us to a figure who stands out in the long line of thinkers and idealists who devoted themselves to the task.

Hamburg gewann nicht durch Fürsten Bedeutung und auch nicht durch den Klerus. Die Hansestadt wuchs allein durch den Handel und galt für Reisende und Auswanderer lange als Tor zur Welt. Im Schatten seines riesigen Hafens wurde Hamburg besonders in den vergangenen 150 Jahren zum Schmelztiegel der Kulturen. Dabei wird sein vielfältiges künstlerisches Leben oft übersehen. Mit den städtischen Bahnlinien als Orientierungshilfe erkundet Jan Bürger Hamburgs einzigartige Geschichte, vom Grindel bis zur Mönckebergstraße, von der Elbphilharmonie bis nach Blankenese.

Today, Pompeii is a place of archaeological wonder. It is littered with bodies of humans in casts, locked in their final pose prior to death. Let’s review how Pompeii came to be a museum of people buried alive. What happened centuries ago? What did archaeologists find out about Pompeii? Learn the answers and more in this book today!

In 1959, at the age of 21, Max Starkloff was in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. His doctors doubted he would live longer than a few days, and, if he survived, the hope for his quality of life would be minimal. How did this young man with barely a high school education become the leader of a powerful disability rights movement and the founder of the Starkloff Disability Institute? This is his remarkable story.

Taking a chronological approach, The War on Paper tells the story of the most destructive war in history through 20 key documents held in the IWM archives. Ranging from high-level iconic records including the signed order to invade Poland on August 1939 and Hitler's final will and testament, to more personal items such as Kindertransport identity papers and the ration book of Queen Mary, the Queen Mother.

For years, British journalist Cash Peters trekked around Europe and America visiting some of the tackiest attractions in the world for his hugely popular public-radio series, The Bad Taste Tours. But a guy can only take so much. Now, as Peters prepares to leave his travel-reporting days behind forever, he takes us along on some of the more ridiculous journeys and adventures of his career.

The day Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, four 13-year-olds converge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where an eccentric curator is seeking four uncommonly brave souls to track down the hidden pages of the Kelmsbury Manuscript, an ancient book of Arthurian legends that lies scattered within the museum's collection and that holds the key to preventing a second attack on American soil.

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They provide a portrait of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. Each of the stories offers glimpses into the lives of ordinary Dubliners, and together they paint a portrait of a nation. Ireland was at a crossroads of history and culture at that time, pursuing a search for national identity and purpose.

Most of us take for granted that our books are vertical on our shelves with the spines facing out, but Henry Petroski, inveterately curious engineer, didn’t. As a result, listeners are guided along the astonishing evolution from papyrus scrolls boxed at Alexandria to upright books shelved at the Library of Congress. Petroski takes us into the pre-Gutenberg world, when books were so scarce they were chained to lecterns for security.

Ob Landwirtschaft, Handel, Verkehr oder Urbanisierung: Seit es uns Menschen gibt, haben wir die Erde geprägt und verändert. Insbesondere seit der Industrialisierung hinterlassen wir einen unverwechselbaren und größtenteils unwiderruflichen Fingerabdruck auf der Erde. Inzwischen ist dieser Abdruck so stark, dass Wissenschaft, Politik und Gesellschaft diskutieren, ob sich die vom Menschen verursachten Veränderungen in geologischer Form niederschlagen und so langfristig sind, dass wir bereits in einem neuen Erdzeitalter leben – dem Anthropozän.

On the day that Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, Germany invaded Holland and Belgium. Despite all the efforts of the Allied armies, Hitler's powerful Panzer divisions smashed their way through to the French coast. For the retreating British Expeditionary Force, Dunkirk was the only practical point of departure, and on May 26, the order for total evacuation, Operation Dynamo, was given.

On June 6, 1944, the Allies carried out the largest amphibious assault in history. Five divisions of British, American, and Canadian troops were landed along a 50-mile stretch of the coast of Normandy in northern France; their mission to gain a foothold ashore and begin the liberation of north-west Europe. The flanks of the invasion force were secured by a major parachute and glider drop of three airborne divisions. By the end of that eventful day, Hitler's "Atlantic Wall" had been breached and 156,000 Allied soldiers were firmly established on French soil.

As Hitler proceeded with his invasion plans, code-named Operation Sealion, he knew that the RAF must not be allowed to threaten the invading forces as they crossed the Channel. It was clear that they would have to be brought to battle and defeated. Still hopeful of a settlement, Hitler believed that a sustained aerial attack, coupled with a U-Boat blockade, might bring Britain to the negotiating table.

During the Second World War, across the frontline as well as on the Home Front, millions of people recorded their thoughts of their experiences - whether in letters, their personal diaries or those prosecuting the war giving speeches. Much as Letters of Note celebrated the great letters written through history, so Words of War allows the Imperial War Museum to showcase its incredible array of first-hand material to shine a light on how people journeyed through the 1939-45 conflict.

Arrian of Nicomedia (c. 86/89-c. after 146/160 AD), was a Greek historian, public servant, military commander, and philosopher of the Roman period. Although written more than 400 years after Alexander's death, Arrian's Campaigns of Alexander is the most reliable account of Alexander from antiquity.

Robert William Dale (1829-1895) was an English Congregational church leader based in Birmingham. In "Christian Worldliness" he explores the endless conflict between Christianity and worldliness. He warns of "the bitter melancholy, this profound discontent with all things in Heaven above and on the earth beneath". Rejecting the idea of "the sanctity of misery" he criticizes the Book of Ecclesiastes and the image of the traditional "Romish Saint", and concludes by stating that for the miseries which we cannot avoid, Divine love offers infinite consolation.

Samuel Davies (1723-1761) was an evangelist, Presbyterian minister, composer of hymns, and prolific author. Davies was one of the first Puritan preachers in Virginia, and one of earliest missionaries to slaves in the British colonies. Davies’ sermons were infused by eschatological fervor as he proclaimed the need for the liberation of the soul from the claws of sin. Sins like avarice, prodigality, evil diversions, vanity, sensuality, and popery had for 150 years afflicted the land, he complains....