Now all the intrigue and action is captured in Welcome to the Wonderlab, a book that reinvents the museum’s exhibits and activities to teach readers about the scientific wonder all around them. This is the sequel to the museum's first book - Explorabook - which sold over 1 million copies lifetime.Welcome to the Wonderlab opens the way every day does: With the instant we open our eyes. It then offers scientific activities that explore the forces at work around us at this moment—the science behind the sunlight that hits our eyelids, for instance, or the sound of the alarm clock that rouses us from slumber. Readers then embark on a journey through a typical day in the life of most kids, encountering and engaging many scientific principles along the way.

    Insightful essays informed by current debates in medical history, anthropology, museology and visual studies are complemented by astonishing images provided by both well-known and niche museums from around the world. With unparalleled coverage provided by curators, the 17 richly illustrated chapters explore collections from Aberdeen to Zurich including: Berlin (the Charité), Cleveland (the Dittrick), Copenhagen (the Medical Museion), Edinburgh (Surgeons’ Hall), Florence (La Specola), Leiden, London (the Hunterian Museum, the Science Museum, and Wellcome Collection), Philadelphia (the Mütter), Stockholm (the Karolinska Institute), Washington DC (the National Museum of Health and Medicine and the Smithsonian).

    Many of these institutions trace their roots to the 1960s and 1970s, when the struggle for racial equality inspired a movement within the black community to make the history and culture of African America more "public." This book tells the story of four of these groundbreaking museums: the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago (founded in 1961); the International Afro-American Museum in Detroit (1965); the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in Washington, D.C. (1967); and the African American Museum of Philadelphia (1976). Andrea A. Burns shows how the founders of these institutions, many of whom had ties to the Black Power movement, sought to provide African Americans with a meaningful alternative to the misrepresentation or utter neglect of black history found in standard textbooks and most public history sites. Through the recovery and interpretation of artifacts, documents, and stories drawn from African American experience, they encouraged the embrace of a distinctly black identity and promoted new methods of interaction between the museum and the local community.Over time, the black museum movement induced mainstream institutions to integrate African American history and culture into their own exhibits and educational programs. This often controversial process has culminated in the creation of a National Museum of African American History and Culture, now scheduled to open in the nation's capital in 2015.