Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History - Hardcover

Gould, Stephen Jay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517703939 ISBN 13: 9780517703939

Publisher: Harmony, 1995

Synopsis

Award-winning, bestselling author, evolutionary biologist, and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould takes the art of the essay to an unprecedented height of excellence in this vibrant new collection of writings on science and natural history. From fads to fungus, baseball to beeswax, Gould always circles back to the great themes of time, change, and history, carrying readers home to the centering theme of evolution. Illustrations.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Jay Gould is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard and the Curator for Invertebrate Paleontology in the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

From the Inside Flap

g, bestselling author, evolutionary biologist, and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould takes the art of the essay to an unprecedented height of excellence in this vibrant new collection of writings on science and natural history. From fads to fungus, baseball to beeswax, Gould always circles back to the great themes of time, change, and history, carrying readers home to the centering theme of evolution. Illustrations.

Reviews

In his seventh volume of witty and erudite essays, Gould casts a wide net, though he always returns to the central theme of evolution. His topics are diverse: Edgar Allan Poe's bestseller, a textbook on shells; Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam as an account of the psychology of mourning; the infamous Wannsee Protocol, Hitler's plan for the "final solution of the Jewish question." Gould is a master of making connections?Linnaeus and Erasmus Darwin (Charles's grandfather), the Razumosky brothers, Aleksei and Andrei; King Lear and the importance of negative results. He discusses evolutionary spin-doctoring, fossil whales, movies (Jurassic Park), museums and theme parks. As might be expected, Gould takes a swipe at creationists. Dinosaur measures up in every way to Bully for Brontosaurus; readers will not be disappointed. Illustrations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Beginning with Ever Since Darwin (LJ 10/1/77), a new collection of Gould's essays from Natural History magazine has appeared every two to three years, and each almost invariably becomes a best seller. Nobody since Lewis Thomas has more successfully worked the genre of the scientific essay to humanize science and promote its understanding than Gould. Fans will seize this book enthusiastically. Gould's explorations of the natural world cover subjects arranged in eight sections, from "Origin, Stability, and Extinctions," to "The Glory of Museums," and even "Writing About Snails." In most pieces, he relates anecdotes from the history of science and demonstrates their relevance to contemporary scientific disputes and social trends. His essays on the fallacies of eugenics, for example, are timely and powerful. Every public and academic library should have broad representation of Gould's works. With this series set to end in 2001, libraries with a continuous set may well want to complete it. A library with no or scant representation of his work should definitely purchase this book. For others in between, it could be considered optional.?Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Here is a new collection of Gould's unexpected connections between evolution and all manner of subjects, literature high among them. Gathered from his monthly column in Natural History magazine, these articles should delight, surprise, and inform his vast readership, as have his six prior volumes of essays. Somehow the light bulb pops on every month as his deadline approaches, some glowing fact pulled out of memory--often a line from Shakespeare or Tennyson--that illumines a generality Gould wishes to discuss. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" (Lord Alfred's line) induces dilations on the extent science can inform moral matters (not much, Gould believes); a remembrance of the infamous Wansee protocol prompts Gould's denunciation of the genocidal looting of evolutionary theory and, by extension, its vulnerability to ignoramuses in general. These two examples of the Gouldian essay method, fortunately, don't foreshadow a gloomy parade of topics: Gould can as easily alight at the fun house where mass culture absorbs ideas about evolution through movies of monsters run amok from Frankenstein to Jurassic Park. In other essays, he plunges directly into matters of evolutionary interpretation but customarily employs a literary twist: who else but Gould could link Edgar Allan Poe with his own area of professional eminence, the paleontology of snails? A discovery awaits in every essay--in every haystack--which solidifies Gould as one of the most eloquent science popularizers writing today. Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0517703939
• ISBN 13: 9780517703939
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480