The Monkey's Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life
*Starred Review* Even Darwin thought it far-fetched—that is, his proposal that ocean-crossing is why similar species that can’t swim or fly are found on oceanic islands and both sides of great oceans. But ocean-crossing how? On what? So when plate tectonics was accepted, some of his successor scientists leaped upon it, arguing that the splitting up of the supercontinent Gondwanaland  was how terrestrial cousins wound up on widely separated dry lands. Problem is, molecular dating indicates that the big breakup occurred tens of millions of years before those specific cousins or even their common ancestors evolved. Hence, for the better part of the last hundred years, debate has raged between dispersalists (ocean-crossing advocates) and vicariance biogeographers (continental-drift advocates). Evolutionary biologist de Queiroz is unapologetically dispersalist but hardly triumphalist about it. As he tells the story, which is as much about the discipline of biogeography as about the dispute, there is no reason for either side to ever proclaim victory. The earth’s animals and plants consist of both Gondwanan  relics and plenty—indeed, a preponderance—of species that have developed ever since the present continents and islands formed. Deciding which are which constitutes a story full of intriguing discoveries that de Queiroz, a fluent and spellbinding popular-science writer, agglomerates into the narrative spine of a book brimming with fascination. --Ray Olson