Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

When I was in grade school, I loved making a diorama. Before that, I remember rearranging and losing myself in a dollhouse. Just now, I remembered looking into dioramas of the Great Chicago Fire at the Illinois State Museum. A couple of years ago, my friend Jody turned me on to The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by taking me to an exhibit of Corinne May Botz's photographs and giving me the book as a gift. These are contemporary photos of miniature murder scenes created by Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962) in the 1940s for the purpose of training students in forensic analysis. I then had the opportunity of seeing a couple of the actual dioramas at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, MD--a unique intersection of death and dollhouses!