It is a story covering 395 million years, a story told with a walrus skull and fossils, tourmaline and spear points, mammoth tusks and bone fishhooks, Norse coins and caulking irons, militia flags and survey stakes, treaty documents and wooden tankards, a temperance banner and a locomotive, Joshua Chamberlain’s pistol and a cod tub trawl, a Lombard log hauler and a woman’s WWII welding outfit, L. L. Bean boots and German POW snowshoes, and many more objects from the Maine State Museum’s collections. Short narratives written by museum curators are woven around each item—including photos of related objects—and the ensemble has been honed, polished, and introduced by museum director Bernard Fishman. 320 pages. Hardcover.
