Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, by Lawrence Weschler

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. What happens when a museum leaves you wondering whether you have encountered a scientific marvel or an elaborate invention? In Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler explores David Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology, where extraordinary exhibits unsettle our confidence in the boundary between fact and fiction. From these curious displays, he journeys back to the sixteenth-century cabinets of curiosities that preceded modern museums, exploring the shared roots of art, science and imaginative discovery. This beguiling book invites us to question how knowledge is presented—and why we believe what we are told. For readers drawn to unusual museums, intellectual mysteries and the pleasures of curiosity, it offers a persuasive reminder that learning begins in wonder.