"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
The many fans who have come to expect a uniquely broad range of subject and elegant, discerning prose from Stephen Jay Gould will be delighted with this new collection, which the author considers by far his best. These essays record a sixty-year battle against creationism, the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the triumph of Voyager's fly-by of Neptune, and other wonders of the world. Drawings.