Based upon the skull collection of Alan Dudley, whose passion has led him to posses one of the most extensive and impressive collections of skulls in the world.; Simon Winchester's books include The Professor and the Madman, Atlantic: A Biography of the Ocean, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded and many more.
Nick Mann is the photographer of The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe. Aside from having photographed more elements and compounds than probably anyone in the world, he is an accomplished landscape, sports, and event photographer. He lives in Urbana, Illinois.
Digging deep into Alan Dudley's collection of more than 2,000
skulls, Winchester (The Professor and the Madman) and photographer
Mann highlight the rarest and most unusual of the vaunted cranium
connoisseur's world-class assortment (which is housed cozily in a
spare upstairs bedroom in his home in England). Grouping the skulls
according to species, Winchester enthusiastically educates armchair
osteologists on the peculiarities of key subspecies, enabling
readers, should the need arise, to tell a long-nosed bandicoot from
a southern brown bandicoot, the bizarrely horned babirusa from a
warthog, or the fearsome (and extinct) saber-toothed cat from a
modern (endangered) tiger. Though some, like the hard-to-find
elephant skull, are replicas, the vast majority are the real thing,
including that of the extinct dodo bird. Winchester rounds out the
book with various essays on topics such as the use of skulls in
artwork, phrenology, and other related subjects with varying
degrees of success. Prone to wordiness, he's at his best offering
short takes on his subjects or tips on DIY skull collecting. Mann's
crisp, reverential photography more than makes up for the volume's
literary shortcomings, making this one coffee-table book that's
hard to resist.
This is a gorgeous, coffee-table book that will the delight the
heart... I loved this book. A real treasure.--Publishers Weekly
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