The Panda's Thumb

The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History; Stephen Jay Gould (Norton, 1980, ISBN 0-393-30819-7. Cover design by Marek Antoniak.).

As with my last read of Gould's enjoyable essays, this book is a collection of his essays that first appeared in the American Museum of Natural History's magazine. (I wonder if they publish anything like this these days?)

Subject matter wanders far and wide, from aspects of Darwin's life and work to a lot of evolutionary theory and even the occasional reference to baseball. Highly recommended.

Made up of: Prologue; Perfection and Imperfection—A Trilogy on a Panda's Thumb: The Panda's Thumb; Senseless Signs of History; Double Trouble. Darwinia: Natural Selection and the Human Brain: Darwin vs. Wallace; Darwin's Middle Road; Death Before Brith, or a Mite's Nunc Dimittis; Shades of Lamarck; Caring Groups and Selfish Genes. Human Evolution: A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse; Piltdown Revisited; Our Greatest Evolutionary Step; In the Midst of Life... Science and Politics of Human Differences: Wide Hats and Narrow Minds; Women's Brains; Dr. Downs Syndrome; Flaws in a Victorian Veil. The Pace of Change: The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change; Return of the Hopeful Monster; The Great Scablands Debate; A Quahog is a Quahog. Early Life: An Early Start; Crazy Old Randolph Kirkpatrick; Bathybius and Eozoon; Might We Fit Inside a Sponge's Cell. They Were Despised and Rejected: Were Dinosaurs Dumb?; The Telltale Wishbone; Nature's Odd Couple; Sticking Up for Marsupials. Size and Time: Our Alloted lifetimes; Natural Attraction; Bacteria, The Birds and The Bees; Time's Vastness.

Counts as thirty-three (33) entries in the 2007 Short Story Project.