Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History

These tapes bring together Stephen Jay Gould's most recent essays on topics as diverse as evolution, Edgar Allen Poe and the meaning of the millennium. The presentation alternates between readings by MacRae and Zimbalist. The former presents with a reedy lyricism befitting the author's lighter moments, and the latter provides the raspy, stentorian baritone of the distinguished professor. Simply packaged and powered by dense prose, this volume teaches us that great scholarship can delight and instruct. J.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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

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