Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating story of evolution in action
Review: This book delivered much more than I expected when I picked it up. It greatly enhanced my understanding of evolution.
Rating: 
Summary: a good read, if you're interested
Review: This book is a fascinating look into the science of volution. It is centeres around the very place that inspired Darwin: the alapagos Islands. Peter and Rosemary Grant, along with many other respected scientists, keep watch on the island of Daphne Major and keep close tabs on the finch population living there. The virtually inaccessible island is perfect for this study because of its sheer simplicity and isolation from the outside world. The Grants can keep a close eye on every environmental factor on the island, and know every one of the finches by sight. Over the past twenty years they have seen remarkable changes in the finches' traights, especially their beaks. They have had a first-hand look at what Darwin said would take millions of years: evolution in action.
The Beak of the Finch is a well-written book that throws a whole new light of authenticity on the theory of evolution. It suggests that evolution is not the slow process Darwin thought it was, but that it can be seen clearly from year to year, season to season. However, it runs into the same problem that has been plaguing the evolutionism-creationism debate for years: it offers no hard evidence that large-scale evolution can occur. If you are an evolutionist, it will confirm your beliefs with several documented cases of proven natural selection. If you are a creationist, chances are it won't sway you much. Creationists argue that you can not extrapolate from relatively minor changes like the ones mentioned to evolving into completely different species. It is a good book if the topic interests you, but most will probably find it more tedious than it is worth as a convincing argument for evolution.
Rating:
Summary: a good read, if you're interested
Review: This book is a fascinating look into the science of volution. It is centeres around the very place that inspired Darwin: the alapagos Islands. Peter and Rosemary Grant, along with many other respected scientists, keep watch on the island of Daphne Major and keep close tabs on the finch population living there. The virtually inaccessible island is perfect for this study because of its sheer simplicity and isolation from the outside world. The Grants can keep a close eye on every environmental factor on the island, and know every one of the finches by sight. Over the past twenty years they have seen remarkable changes in the finches' traights, especially their beaks. They have had a first-hand look at what Darwin said would take millions of years: evolution in action.
The Beak of the Finch is a well-written book that throws a whole new light of authenticity on the theory of evolution. It suggests that evolution is not the slow process Darwin thought it was, but that it can be seen clearly from year to year, season to season. However, it runs into the same problem that has been plaguing the evolutionism-creationism debate for years: it offers no hard evidence that large-scale evolution can occur. If you are an evolutionist, it will confirm your beliefs with several documented cases of proven natural selection. If you are a creationist, chances are it won't sway you much. Creationists argue that you can not extrapolate from relatively minor changes like the ones mentioned to evolving into completely different species. It is a good book if the topic interests you, but most will probably find it more tedious than it is worth as a convincing argument for evolution.
Rating: 
Summary: Enthralling account of evolution in action
Review: This book is a must for anyone with even the most remote interest in evolution. The Beak of the Finch will gratify your love of nature by introducing you to the dynamics of one of nature's most cryptic phenomena. To most it would seem that evolution is to slow to watch to those I say: "read this book". Jonathan Weiner underlines beutifully the scientfifc process and how tedious but rewarding it is. The Beak of the Finch sometimes becomes repetitive but this is to the benefit of the reader. As much as this may become tedious your understanding of Darwin's complex phenomenon only becomes more vibrant. Jonathan Weiner is masterful at making the reader enjoy and understand peoples love of science and how there is more to just speculation in evolutionary science. This book makes its point in a highly comprehensive manner.
Rating:
Summary: Overextending himself
Review: This book is an account of Peter and Rosemary Grant's fascinating empirical study of "Darwin's finches" in the Galapagos Islands. That study, and the knowledge gained, is fascinating, and makes the book worth reading. However, in one important way, I was highly dissatisfied with the author's efforts. In describing the Grants' study, he clearly makes a case for natural-selection-driven adaptation and speciation. At the beginning of the book, he is rightfully excited that the Grants' work has provided empirical support of a logical, plausible hypthesis: that adaptation and speciation are driven by natural selection. As a good empiricist, he believes that a process that can be logically and plausibly articulated must still be doubted until it's empirically tested and proven. Here's the problem: the Grants' work provides empirical evidence that given a base of existing genetic material, natural selection and hybridization can change the distribution of those genes (ie, more or fewer large-beaked finches) in the population. But he doesn't honestly face the problem of creation of new genetic material: changing the percentage of large-beaked birds in a finch population is a different event in kind than the creation of an eye, the creation of a whole new genetic and organic phenomenon. When he tries to leap from beaks of finches to the creation of complex organs, he is satisfied with that which he previously derided: his proof that the eye could be created from natural selection is just a summary (a la Richard Dawkins) of the logical plausibility that 2% sight is more advantageous than 1% sight, so we can now imagine that the eye was created through natural selection. Weiner has disingenuously extrapolated from beaks to eyes by using the same type of nonempirical argument that he started off saying was unsatisfying and not a proper basis for scientific understanding. In the end, Weiner claims that the Grants' work has empirically proven much more than it really has. It is this weakness that makes his pompous dismissal of Creationists in the last chapter even more dissatisfying; such a conclusion is unwarranted by his argument and weakened by his argumentative flaw.
Rating:
Summary: A truly important book
Review: This books demonstates two fundamental insights with detailed observations. 1) Evoluton happens in real time. 2) Two species are distinct not because cross species mating cannot occur but because it does not occur. This situation can change
Rating:
Summary: Marvelously interesting and exciting book!
Review: This is a fabulous book, exciting, entertaining, and educational, all at once. Beautifully illustrates and explains what is probably the most important theory in biology, and simultaneously shows how science is actually done. I enjoyed this very much.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books - Completely Inspirational
Review: This isn't just a book about birds or evolution. It's an inspirational book about life on Earth.
Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: This should be required reading for all incoming college freshmen. A course that included this book along with The Voyage of the Beagle and E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology would be wonderful. Weiner does a great job of presenting the Grants' work in a form that even non-scientists can understand. The Beak of the Finch dispells many common misconceptions about the science of evolution. Well done!
Rating:
Summary: One Great Novel!
Review: Very few people gape at birds and consider that they play an intensely large role in the "Theory of Evolution", or in the world as a whole. This was at least my opinion of birds before reading The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. Reading this novel positively opened my eyes and made me think more of birds than just pesky little creatures with pretty colors. In this "Documentary" like novel, author Jonathan Weiner follows scientist Peter and Rosemary Grant around the Galapagos Islands, where famous Evolutionist Charles Darwin first fathomed the idea of Natural Selection and Evolution. Weiner does a great job making his reader feel as though they are apart of the Grants adventure in every step they take encompassing the Galapagos Islands to find and study one of the rarest birds the Galapagos Finch. Examining the ways in which Darwin's theory of Natural Selection affects the Finches Rosemary and Peter Grant travel the islands prepared to tackle the ways in which evolution occurs from year to year. With weather conditions that often decide which type of Finch will survive and which will die, The Grants prove that not only are they good at what they do, but they most importantly prove that Natural Selection does actually occur rapidly almost day to day, and not just every few thousand years. Rosemary and Peter, who have won numerous awards for their achievements, have also tackled the mystery of the number of different species of finches there are on the islands. In the novel Wiener states "The Grants team measurements of live Darwin Finches have surpassed the number of specimens in the worlds museums." This is defiantly one book that I would recommend to anyone, with a fascination of the ways in which evolution works, or even a love for birds!
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