Teach Secondary - Issue 14.6

Off the Shelves Brilliant titles for you and your students to explore Nature’sMemory (JackAshby,AllenLane,£25) One would think that the stories told by the exhibits in natural historymuseums are reasonably objective and factual, but apparently not. Reconstructing the skeletons of long-dead species, for example, can often be amatter of guesswork based on our knowledge of the human skeleton.That might seem reasonable enough, but as Ashby details here – amid interesting discussions of acquisition and animatronics – problems can set in when scientific assumptions affect public perceptions.To illustrate this, he cites one case where female pronouns were automatically bestowed upon the fossils of two prehistoric creatures apparently preserved in the act of looking after their eggs, raising questions about how objectively true natural historymuseumexhibitions actually are – when even the preponderance ofmammals in such locations can present a misleading picture. Recommended. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman (see bit.ly/Eclecticismformoredetails ) StrangerthanFiction: Livesof theTwentiethCenturyNovel (EdwinFrank,FernPress,£25) At first glance, this book’s table of contents seems puzzling. Despite running to nearly 500 pages, Frank seems to be using fewer than 50 different novels to represent a hundred years of literary evolution – but appearances can be deceptive. Each chapter is rich with connections between themain work under discussion andmany other earlier and later novels by other writers.We also get detailed dives into the biographical details of the featured author, and careful consideration of prevailing social and political context in which the bookwas first published. Be advised, though – this is no dry, dusty academic tome, but rather a highly readable romp through some of the 20th century’s key literarymilestones. Comes highly recommended as both a reference book, and an enjoyable read in its own right. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman TheGreatExchange:Making theNews inEarlyModern Europe (JoadRaymondWren,AllenLane,£40) This isn’t a book about the history of newspapers, but of news itself, and the many ways in which it has manifested over time – from pamphlets and personal diaries to chronicles.Wren’s key point is that what we think of as ‘news’ predated newspapers, which can be easily overlooked in the media-saturated present day. InWren’s telling, the real history of the news isn’t just a chronology of technological inventions, but one that encompasses the development of early postal services and establishment of trading routes. It’s also fascinating to read how our conception of an ‘editor’ began centuries ago, with individuals collating bits and pieces of news from different sources and writers – with no regard for copyright or editorial stances – in order to produce the first ‘news’ pamphlets. ReviewedbyTerry Freedman 42 teachwire.net/secondary