America's Greatest Museum Displays

In Defense of the Strange Thing Under GlassEvery state has history. Every state has pride. Every state has a flag, a flower, a bird, a motto, and at least one roadside attraction that makes a traveler say, "Pull over immediately. I need to know why there is a giant fiberglass thing wearing a hat."This book is about those places.Not the grand museums with marble staircases, whispering docents, and paintings of serious people holding fruit. Those museums are fine. They are important. They preserve civilization. But this book is about the other museums - the ones where civilization took a wrong turn, found a taxidermied duck, a two-headed lamb, a jar of mustard, a haunted box, a mummified alligator man, or a ham old enough to have opinions about the Roosevelt administration, and said, "Yes. This belongs in a display case."These are the museums that understand the human soul.Because let us be honest: most people enter a museum with noble intentions. We plan to learn. We plan to appreciate culture. We plan to read every plaque, slowly and respectfully, like citizens with excellent shoes. But somewhere around the third room of respectable pottery, the mind begins to wander. Then somebody whispers, "There's a two-headed calf downstairs," and suddenly the whole group moves with the purpose of pioneers crossing a continent.That is not a failure of education. That is education finally waking up.