Bully for Brontosaurus - Book Review

Stephen Jay Gould (1941 - 2002) is remembered as one of the most influential and popular authors of modern popular science. He was a noted evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, biology teacher and science historian.

He is also well-remembered for the essays he regularly wrote for Natural History magazine. Gould was known for the way he could weave his personal interests and pastimes into these pieces, which made him one of the very few scientists able to build a very personal rapport with his readers.

Gould was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University. He published over twenty books, received the National Book and National Book Critics Circle Awards, and a MacArthur Fellowship.


BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS
Bully for Brontosaurus is the fifth collection of Gould's essays to be published. Most of these pieces first appeared in his regular column for Natural History. This book is said to have been Gould's favorite of all his essay collections, and I may just agree with him!

I found the essays in this book to be not only educational, but incredibly fun to read. Gould can took two or three seemingly unrelated topics and, by the end of the essay, have made a logical connection between them. This is, in fact, Gould's aim. In the introduction to this book he states that he likes to write "beginning with something small and curious and then working outward and onward by a network of lateral connections."

The title essay, "Bully for Brontosaurus", is a discussion as to the theory and history of the taxonomic method for naming extinct species. Why, oh why, do we continue to call the Apatosaurus (deceptive lizard) by the wrong name, Brontosaurus (thunder lizard)?

I love Gould's style and the way he makes it easy to understand some scientific debates and discussions that are usually considered quite complex. His prose is both beautiful and entertaining, and you never feel like you're being talked down to! While it may not be a book you want to sit down and read straight through (although I did), it's perfectly presented so that you can browse through the essays and read them in any order you choose.


BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS ESSAYS
Here is a breakdown of the ten sections of the book, and the thirty-five essays it contains:


History in Evolution
- George Canning 's Left Buttock and the Origin of Species
- Grimm 's Greatest Tale
- The Creation Myths of Cooperstown
- The Panda's Thumb of Technology

Dinomania
- Bully for Brontosaurus
- The Dinosaur Rip

Adaptation
- Of Kiwi Eggs and the Liberty Bell
- Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples
- Not Necessarily a Wing

Fads and Fallacies
- The Case of the Creeping Fox Terrier Clone
- Life's Little Joke
- The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs

Art and Science
- Madame Jeanette
- Red Wings in the Sunset
- Petrus Camper 's Angle
- Literary Bias on the Slippery Slope

Down Under
- Glow, Big Glowworm
- To Be a Platypus
- Bligh's Bounty
- Here Goes Nothing

Intellectual Biography

Biologists
- In a Jumbled Drawer
- Kropotkin Was No Crackpot
- Fleeming Jenkin Revisited

Physical Scientists
- The Passion of Antoine Lavoisier
- The Godfather of Disaster

Evolution and Creation

The World of T. H. Huxley
- Knight Takes Bishop?
- Genesis and Geology

Scopes to Scalia
- William Jennings Bryan's Last Campaign
- An Essay on a Pig Roast
- Scalia 's Misunderstanding

Numbers and Probability
- The Streak of Streaks
- The Median Isn't the Message
- The Ant and the Plant

Planets as Persons
- The Face of Miranda
- The Horn of Triton


Looking for a new book for yourself or a gift for someone else? I would certainly recommend that you consider Bully for Brontosaurus!

(Disclaimer: This book was purchased by me with my own funds.)


But Bully for Brontosaurus at Amazon!