“Gracefully written and deeply researched, Life on Display documents the social and intellectual forces that remodeled American natural history museums during the twentieth century, changing science-driven exhibition halls into centers for mass diversion. Rader and Cain have created a must-read for scholars of popularization of science and for anyone with an interest in science museums today.

“Museums of nature and science are well served by knowing the twentieth-century development of their sector in cause-and-effect terms. The journey continues. In the pivotal twenty-first century, museums of nature and science are being called upon to illuminate the interdependency between Earth and human affairs. This timely book provides a widely referenced baseline to inform the ongoing innovation of these institutions towards their optimal states of external relevance and internal sustainability.

“Fast-paced and well written, this pathbreaking account of twentieth-century museums reveals their dramatic transformation from reliance on collections as their defining characteristic to centers of public education and entertainment. Rader and Cain document how well-established major museums—particularly those in New York, Washington, Chicago, and other major cities—were at times exuberantly experimental; ultimately, however, the familiar institutions we know today emerged through rethinking of mission and debates involving scientists, exhibit designers, educators, and communities. With its thorough attention to historical evidence, this engaging volume provokes reflection on important issues that continue to confront museums and the societies they serve.

“In Life on Display we meet the ‘museum men’ (and they were mainly men) and other staff who struggled variously with questions of the relationship between museum research and display, how to raise funding, and how best to deal with sometimes recalcitrant visitors or overenthusiastic donors (yet another horned toad or dog flea); and also with matters such as into which pose an elephant should be taxidermied or how to cope with the sheer vibrancy of biodiversity. This wonderfully detailed account of the changing world of US museums of natural history and science takes us from miked-up grasshoppers to shrimp ballets, from the transparent woman to the cardiac kitchen—and, of course, from dinosaur skeletons to the animatronic T rex. Like the best of the exhibitions that it describes, Life on Display is based in rich, scholarly research but made thoroughly accessible by its creators’ skill and the sheer interest of what is described—it is definitely not to be missed!

“For anyone who has enjoyed a trip to a science museum—and who hasn’t?!—Rader and Cain provide a fascinating backstage tour of these institutions. What they discover is that across the twentieth century the drama that has gone on behind the scenes is just as interesting as the exhibits we all come to see. Far from being dusty, static places, museums that put ‘life on display’ are dynamic and contentious in ways the public never sees.