Manchester City Library

Dinosaurs are one of those topics that never loses its appeal. We’re fascinated by these creatures. That’s why I was surprised to find a stack of dinosaur books that no one has checked out of the Library in at least three years!

• Fossils by Cyril Walker and David Ward – Nice handbook to fossils with color images and guides. Would be ideal for a school project!
• Rex Appeal: The Amazing Story of Sue, the Dinosaur that Changed Science, the Law, and My Life by Peter Larson & Kristin Donnan – Publishers Weekly said
  

  In 1990, his team discovered the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that the world had seen. Almost immediately, however, the team (which is unaffiliated with any university) became embroiled in a dispute with the U.S. government about who owns the fossil, during which the skeleton was seized by the National Guard.

• The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt by William Nothdurft – from the Publishers Weekly review:
  

  Between 1910 and 1914, Ernst Stromer, a little-known German paleontologist and explorer, unearthed a wealth of dinosaur fossils in Egypt’s Bahariya Oasis. Thirty years later, Stromer’s discoveries were destroyed in a WWII Allied bombing raid, and the oasis lay neglected for decades until Josh Smith, a Penn State doctoral candidate in paleontology, decided to retrace Stromer’s footsteps in 1999.

• Bone Wars: The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur by Tom Rea – From the Library Journal Review:
  

  When Pittsburgh steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie opened the Carnegie Institute in 1895, he hoped that his friend O.C. Marsh would provide a dinosaur for his new museum. However, Marsh died in 1898, leaving Carnegie without a dinosaur. Then the New York Post published a story about a colossal sauropod skeleton found in Wyoming by a man named Bill Reed. Carnegie was determined to get the fossil for his museum, but the University of Wyoming was just as determined.

• Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found by Steve Fiffer – From the back cover’s “Praise” section:
  

  For more than 65 million years, Sue rested in her Cretaceous coffin. She awoke to a wold of legal battles and rivalry as fierce in their way as anything she faced when alive. Steve Fiffer tells her compelling story as well as it could be told.

• The Gilded Dinosaur: the Fossil War Between E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science by Mark Jaffe – from an Amazon Customer Review:
  

  What could be drier than a book devoted to two men battling over collecting fossils and gaining the rights to name creatures extinct for over 100 million years – and this having taken place over 125 years ago at that. Well it could be dry and stuffy but not when Mark Jaffe takes his broad brush to his canvas and we find that intertwined in this story traipse the likes of: P.T. Barnum, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, George Custer, and even Buffalo Bill Cody. We also will find U.S. Grant’s cronies siphoning off aid that was supposed to go to the Indians. Add to the mix a few thousand Sioux warriors to liven up the story.

• Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard A. Fortey – from the book summary:
  

  Imagine yourself having a conversation with an enthusiastic and eccentrically charming British specialist on a kind of extinct arthropod, and you will have some idea of the appeal of Fortey’s new work.