Short Synopsis
A collection of thirty-five essays—representing the best of the column This View of Life from Natural History magazine—focuses on the themes of evolution and of the innumerable oddities of nature.

Full Synopsis
"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