Offbeat Museums: A Guided Tour of America's Weirdest and Wackiest Museums

by Saul Rubin

From the Liberace Museum in Nevada to the Banana Museum in California to Leila's Hair Museum in Missouri, this illustrated guide carries readers into the most unusual collections ever gathered and put on display--and into the minds of the men and women who obsessively assembled them.

Think you've "been there, done that?" Well maybe you haven't quite seen it all. Saul Rubin's enthusiastic journey through the showcases of our country's weirdest wonders suggests that there are modern cabinets of curiosities all around--if you just know where to look. So take a step into these pages and be amazed to find The Cockroach Hall of Fame, The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, Mister Ed's Elephant Museum, The UFO Enigma Museum, The Museum of Bathroom Tissue--and forty-five others!

Each entertaining listing features photos, descriptions, history, profiles and all of the essential information you need to plan a visit to one of these unique sites.

Genres: Museums, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1997

Reviews

[Elaine Meszaros · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't begin to tell you how upset I was to discover the Madison Museum of Bathroom Tissue had closed a few scant years before I moved here. Such a shrine, virtually in my own back yard! A well, there are plenty of other great places to visit - The Nut Museum (Old Lyme, CT), The Great Blacks in Wax Museum - famous black people wax sculptures (Baltimore. MD), Kam Wah Chung and Co. Museum - perfectly preserved frontier store and Chinese apothecary (John Day, Oregon) and the Children's Garbage Museum of Southwest Connecticut (Stanford, CT). Looks like good road-tripping to me!

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I did enjoy the quirky characters and interesting fixations that these short descriptions highlighted, I'm not sure that I was inspired to visit any of them. Because this book is dated, I suspect that some of these places are no longer in operation. I suspect that the research to compile this book was extremely interesting at the time Rubin undertook it. And, some of the topics that I expected to turn my stomach or be difficult to read about where actually fascinating to me. This probably won't be a book that I re-read or share with others though.

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is ridiculously awesome. It would be an excellent guide for a totally bitching roadtrip. I love to read about the eccentric obsessives who start museums in their basements dedicated to things like toilet seat art, bananas, miniature buildings created from recycled trash, medical paraphenalia, etc. Some day when I retire I am totally gonna create my own ridiculous museum based on a bizarre, slightly deranged hobby.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cool! I will have to check and see if they have a similar one for libraries

[Ellison · Rating 4 out of 5]

features a collection of museums about odd things to collect and display for view. insightful, surreal.

[Andy Haskins]

actually I read Saul's "The Big Conch" - but its not listed in Goodreads, so this is the only way to keep track of it