Evolutionary theory in the theme that binds together these essays on such seemingly disparate topics as the feeding habits of flamingos, flowers and snails that change from male to female and sometimes back again, and the extinction from baseball of the .400 hitter.

For more than twenty-five years, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a column called "The View of Life" for Natural History magazine. More than twenty entries from that column comprise this collection, which includes such essays as "Boyle's Law and Darwin's Details," "Brotherhood by Inversion (or, As the Worm Turns)," "Darwin's American Soulmate," "The Diet of Worms and Defenestration of Prague," "The Dodo in the Caucus Race," "Reversing Established...

"Provocative and delightfully discursive essays on natural history . . . Gould is the Stan Musial of essay writing. He can work himself into a corkscrew of ideas and improbable allusions paragraph after paragraph and then, uncoiling, hit it with such power that his fans know they are experiencing the game of essay writing at its best." -John Noble Wilford, New York Times Book Review

Presents a new view of scientific progress in which variety, and not complexity, is heralded as the true measure of excellence, illustrated by examples such as the disappearance of 0.400 hitting in baseball, and the absence of modern Mozarts.

"{An} extraordinary book . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."-James Gleick, New York Times Book Review High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived-a...