Rating: 
Summary: Enlightening!
Review: Gould is just great, as ever
Rating: 
Summary: Gould makes natural science a fun read.
Review: Gould makes clever analogies & comparisons of natural sciences with common things around us. Most of the topics he covered would be a bore to read by itself but Gould masterfully entertains & educates with his adroit prose & humorous side comments.It is a bit on the long side and some of his comparisons used fads of the early 90's which are not relevant today; but all in all, the book is a winner.
Rating:
Summary: Gould makes natural science a fun read.
Review: Gould makes clever analogies & comparisons of natural sciences with common things around us. Most of the topics he covered would be a bore to read by itself but Gould masterfully entertains & educates with his adroit prose & humorous side comments. It is a bit on the long side and some of his comparisons used fads of the early 90's which are not relevant today; but all in all, the book is a winner.
Rating: 
Summary: Needs editing
Review: I enjoyed several of the essays in this book. To me, they were fresh and insightful and interesting reading. Then I got to read another essay on the same topic, then another. The organization of the book is such that reading it straight through bored me to death. Gould could stand to edit some of these roundabout tales down and get to the point a little quicker. The thoughts are thoroughly interesting, but they are buried in long-winded prose.
Rating: 
Summary: Populist Rubbish
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. Others have commented that is is heavy going and I certainly found that to be true.
I also consider the essays that make up this book to be just Gould's disjointed ramblings on a number of topics with no supporting scientific evidence to back up any of his views. It's not a scientific book. Perhaps if I can quote from the essay that bares the title of the book "Bully for Brontosaurus". It begins like this, "Question: What do Catherine the Great, Attila the Hun, and Bonzo the Clown have in common? Answer: They all have the same middle name. Question: What do San Marino, Tannu Tuva, and Moroco have in common? Answer: They all realized that they could print pretty pieces of perforated paper, call them stamps, and sell them at remarkable prices to philatelists throughout the world." He them goes on to discuss some of the differences between these countries. I think this is supposed to be fascinating! But to me it was booooring.
But if this rubbish appeals to you then you're in for a treat, because there's 500 odd pages of the same sort of tripe
Rating:
Summary: Just plain good reading!
Review: Stephen Jay Gould once again proves his amazing skill at presenting difficult scientific concepts in a clear, concise way. Eclectic, humorous, and always a chance to learn something new, Mr Gould's book is a refreshing look at everything around us. His insight into evolutionary concepts is profound, and it is a pleasure to read the work of someone who presents evolution as a fact -- something that most other authors (apparently including every science textbook writer in America) are too cowardly to do. Mr. Gould deserves a score of 10 for this book, but I'm beginning to suspect that he's a Yankees fan, so I held one point back on principle. I look forward to hearing clarification from him on that sticky point.
Rating:
Summary: Bully for Brontosaurus
Review: Stephen Jay Gould writes another volume of essays that are profound in scope. Trying to review essays in book form is difficult, but taking the task at hand, here is what I have to say. These collected essays are enlightening and thought provoking. They vary in scope and content, but are always stimulating. The author has a knack for making the reader think, as I suppose all good professors should, a task well taken here. The writing is easily followed and straight forward with a smattering of Gould's wit thrown in for spice. The authou's sense of humor is also apparent. The essays are educational, even as the author brings two apparently different articles and ties them together with a common thread. I found a cornucopia of disparate objects that fueled my intellectual pleasure, as I read through the book. Anyone interested in Natural History or just curious about life should read this book. The author's flowing writing style is evident, his teaching skills are there to enjoy and learn from. Read and enjoy good writing.
Rating:
Summary: Gooey Globs of the Great God Gould
Review: The 20th century has produced 3 truly great science writers, professional scientists who are able to not only write well, and not only in their own particular fields, but in virtually all fields of science and culture. Two of those great writers, Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, are no longer among us. The third, Stephen Jay Gould, is. Gould is an eclectic writer and a true scholar, able to make virtually any subject not only accessible to the "average" reader, if there is any such animal, but also fascinating- if you have no interest in the subject of an essay when you begin reading, you will have an interest by the time you finish. Gould's essays wander far and wide across many fields of science, religion, literature, history and human nature, but all revolve around his one central passion- evolution, and how it effects EVERYTHING (earning for Gould the eternal contempt of Creationists.) If I could recommend the works of only two writers from whom you would be allowed to gain an understanding of the world, Stephen Jay Gould would be one of them (and Joseph Campbell the other
Rating:
Summary: A readable natural science book
Review: This is a fascinating book. Who knew you could actually read about science and like it (and laugh too). It's also informative. Great.
Rating:
Summary: Practice Makes (More Nearly) Perfect
Review: This is the sixth of the collections of Gould's essays from the magazine Natural History. Gould has commented that, as he got better at essay writing, he found the earlier volumes less pleasing. Certainly, as he went along, he improved both in literary quality and in the depth of his treatment of issues. Gould is amusing, but always with a serious purpose: to educate the public about how science works, and how, often, it doesn't. In particular, the section of three essays gathered under the heading "Numbers and Probability" is very good at making one think about the real nature of "the odds."
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