This is a beautiful book with a wide variety of museums. I loved the illustrations and the integrated quotes.

The museums are all located in North and Central America, but I was happy to see more than the typical big museums (the Met, the Guggenheim, MOMA, The Field Museum, Smithsonian, etc) within the pages. My favorites I felt were well treated and there were many of the 70 museums that I was happy to learn about and add to my bucket list.

Personally I felt like Noah's Ark Encounter should have been left out - it isn't a museum, its more of a theme park. A better choice would have been the National Zoo if they wanted something with animals (fun tidbit - zoos are classified as museums by the AAM and ICM).

I am a huge museum goer visiting museums featuring Art, Natural History, Architecture, Science, Industry, Transportation etc. in many countries. This book includes over 70 museums and I was happy to see I have visited almost half of the ones listed. Most museums get two pages of space. They include illustrations of the museums, information on the background or focus of the museums and some other notes. This is focused on museums in North America. I counted three from Mexico and one from Canada and the rest from the United States. I have added several museums to my list for visiting in the future. I originally gave a lower rating because my digital ARC copy only gave me a portion of the book. I appreciate the publisher reaching out and correcting the issues and I am updating my review. This book is set for release in May 2024. Thank you to Chronicle Books, and Princeton Architectural Press for the corrected ARC and I am leaving an honest review.

Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums was right up my alley. I love museums, the more unique, the better! The art in this book was stunning and the blurbs about each museum were interesting and pinpointed what was unique about each location. I did remove one star because this ARC was not indicated to be a sample, but seemed to only provide a sampling of the museums that would be covered in the final edition. I already have that flagged in my Libby account to borrow when it is published since I did enjoy this sample so much!

So ... not every book is for every person. As a somewhat recent retiree, having the time to visit museums is a fabulous perk. When I noticed that Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums: Stories and Memorable Moments from People Who Love Museums was available as an "advance read copy" via NetGalley, I requested the opportunity to review in exchange for an honest review.

The advance read copy (ARC) that was provided was 42 pages, 5 pages were biank and 9 pages were title or chapter pages, the Introduction was 4 pages and the index 3 pages. The ARC contained 12 museums. It looks like the format is a brief description of the museum, sketches of an exhibit or two, and random comments from a visitor or curator for each museum. When comments are random, you get random. The comment about the Intrepid Museum comes from a Seaman stationed on the Intrepid who had no idea that it had even become a museum. (huh? why?)

I found some examples of things that I thought were in accurate and will be providing to the publisher as comments.

In my opinion, this was one of the "roughest" ARC's I've ever read. And honestly I'm rather glad that there were only 30 some pages for me to review. I don't think its fair to provide reviews without reading the book completely, but I did read the ARC completely. I've provided my honest review in exchange for the ARC. I don't believe the book is complete and will be offering the publisher the opportunity for me to delete my review if they request me to do so. I sincerely doubt that this book is complete, based on the ARC. This book was not for me.

Gorgeous illustrations and fascinating text. This is a must read for museum lovers. Thank you for the arc. Although, I will never get to all the museums featured in this book, I loved having the insight into the wide variety of museums.

Pre-publication copies of a book like Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums by Bob Eckstein can be frustrating. One hopes that references to the Smithsonian “Institute” [very sic] will be fixed. But an introduction that shows the author didn’t like museums as a kid, to poor choices of subjects (“Noah’s Ark Encounter” is not a museum!), and the rather random quotes, doesn’t give me much hope for the final version. The illustrations are nice, though. #netgalley

Thank you for the EArc NetGalley and Chronicle Books. I loved this book about various museums throughout the country but it was much much too short. Here’s to hoping for a sequel because I loved the layout, illustrations and stories for each museum, just hoped for more.

Lovely book about museums. I’ve added a few more museums on my bucket list because of this book.

I received an ARC from Netgalley and the publisher.

Such a fun and visually compelling account of museums that are not just fascinating or enjoyable for adults but for anyone who has any interest in learning anything. A fun and enjoyable read that had me wishing I was spending my days just touring museums instead of in school.

What a fun book! I love a good museum and like in the opening, I love reading all the plaques and soaking in all the information. A few of the museums featured in this book are definitely on my to do list and I wouldn't have minded this book being even bigger to include more! It was fun to read that the United States has all sorts of museums and it would take a lifetime to visit the majority of them!

While I enjoyed reading an early ecopy, I think this could be one that I would want to purchase for my collection and maybe even put out as a display item for guests to flip through in my house.