Dinosaur in a Haystack

Dinosaur in a Haystack
Author(s)	Stephen Jay Gould
Genre(s)	Non-fiction, Science
Publisher	Harmony Books
Publication date	December 12, 1995
Pages	480
ISBN	0-517-70393-9
OCLC Number	33892123
Dewey Decimal	575 20
LC Classification	QH366.2 .G659 1995
Preceded by	Eight Little Piggies
Followed by	Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995) is the seventh volume of collected essays by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The essays were culled from his monthly column "The View of Life" in Natural History magazine, to which Gould contributed for 27 years. The book deals, in typically discursive fashion, with themes familiar to Gould's writing: evolution and its teaching, science biography, probabilities and common sense. Gould even analyzed a controversial conchology textbook, The Conchologist's First Book, edited by Edgar Allan Poe in 1839.

Contents

• Come Seven
  1. Heaven and Earth
     1. Happy Thoughts on a Sunny Day in New York City
     2. Dousing Diminutive Dennis's Debate (or DDDD = 2000)
     3. The Celestial Mechanic and the Earthly Naturalist
     4. The Late Birth of a Flat Earth
  2. Literature and Science
     5. The Monster's Human Nature
     6. The Tooth and Claw Centennial
     7. Sweetness and Light
  3. Origin, Stability, and Extinction
     Origin
     8. In the Mind of the Beholder
     9. Of Tongue Worms, Velvet Worms, and Water Bears
        

     Stability

     10. Cordelia's Dilemma
     11. Lucy on the Earth in Stasis

     Extinction

     12. Dinosaur in a Haystack
     13. Jove's Thunderbolts
  4. Writing about Snails
     14. Poe's Greatest Hit
     15. The Invisible Woman
     16. Left Snails and Right Minds
  5. The Glory of Museums
     17. Dinomania
     18. Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!
     19. Evolution by Walking
     20. The Razumovsky Duet
     21. Four Antelopes of the Apocalypse
  6. Disparate Faces of Eugenics
     22. Does the Stoneless Plum Instruct the Thinking Reed?
     23. The Smoking Gun of Eugenics
     24. The Most Unkindest Cut of All
  7. Evolutionary Theory, Evolutionary Stories
     Theory
     25. Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?
     26. A Humongous Fungus Among Us
     27. Speaking of Snails and Scales

     Stories

     28. Hooking Leviathan by Its Past
     29. A Special Fondness for Beetles
     30. If Kings Can Be Hermits, Then We Are All Monkeys' Uncles
     31. Magnolias from Moscow
  8. Linnaeus and Darwin's Grandfather
     32. The First Unmasking of Nature
     33. Ordering Nature by Budding and Full-Breasted Sexuality
     34. Four Metaphors in Three Generations

• Bibliography
• Index

From Publishers Weekly

“

In his seventh volume of witty and erudite essays, Gould casts a wide net, though he always returns to the central theme of evolution. His topics are diverse: Edgar Allan Poe's bestseller, a textbook on shells; Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam as an account of the psychology of mourning; the infamous Wannsee Protocol, Hitler's plan for the "final solution of the Jewish question." Gould is a master of making connections?Linnaeus and Erasmus Darwin (Charles's grandfather), the Razumosky brothers, Aleksei and Andrei; King Lear and the importance of negative results. He discusses evolutionary spin-doctoring, fossil whales, movies (Jurassic Park), museums and theme parks. As might be expected, Gould takes a swipe at creationists. Dinosaur measures up in every way to Bully for Brontosaurus; readers will not be disappointed.

”

Reviews

• Snails, Frankenstein and King Lear's Daughter - by Philip Lopate, The New York Times
• Two Cultures - by Howard A. Doughty, Innovation Journal
• Book review - by Kathryn Denning
• Book review - by Danny Yee