Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
Stephen Jay Gould has a wide range of interests, and for many years he has shared his  enthusiasms in the pages ofNatural Historyand theNew York Review of Books, among  other journals. His passions include baseball, the puzzles of evolutionary theory, and the game of scholarly  detection as it applies to questions such as, "What became of dinosaurs, anyway?". He answers  entertainingly, but never talks down to his readers. Gould is one of modern natural science's great  popularizers, but he shuns the temptation to make the giant reptiles of prehistory the Smurfs of the 1990s,  in the manner of a certain purple dinosaur. The 35 pieces gathered here make for fine browsing, full of  sideways glances and digressions that eventually make sense.