Dinosaur in a Haystack
Encyclopedia
Dinosaur in a Haystack is the seventh volume of collected essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s by the Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 paleontologist
Paleontology
Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

 Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....

. The essays were culled from his monthly column "The View of Life" in Natural History
Natural History (magazine)
Natural History is an American natural history magazine. The stated mission of the magazine is to promote public understanding and appreciation of nature and science.- 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
The Conchologist's First Book
The Conchologist's First Book is an illustrated textbook on conchology issued in 1839, 1840, and 1845. The book was originally printed under Edgar Allan Poe's name. Poe never claimed, however, that he was the author. Poe's condensed version was based on the textbook by Thomas Wyatt, an English...

, edited by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

 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
      1. The Monster's Human Nature
      2. The Tooth and Claw Centennial
      3. Sweetness and Light

    3. Origin, Stability, and Extinction

      Origin
      1. In the Mind of the Beholder
      2. Of Tongue Worms, Velvet Worms, and Water Bears

      Stability
      1. Cordelia's Dilemma
      2. Lucy on the Earth in Stasis

      Extinction
      1. Dinosaur in a Haystack
      2. Jove's Thunderbolts

    4. Writing about Snails
      1. Poe's Greatest Hit
      2. The Invisible Woman
      3. Left Snails and Right Minds

    5. The Glory of Museums
      1. Dinomania
      2. Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!
      3. Evolution by Walking
      4. The Razumovsky Duet
      5. Four Antelopes of the Apocalypse

    6. Disparate Faces of Eugenics
      1. Does the Stoneless Plum Instruct the Thinking Reed?
      2. The Smoking Gun of Eugenics
      3. The Most Unkindest Cut of All

    7. Evolutionary Theory, Evolutionary Stories

      Theory
      1. Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?
      2. A Humongous Fungus Among Us
      3. Speaking of Snails and Scales

      Stories
      1. Hooking Leviathan by Its Past
      2. A Special Fondness for Beetles
      3. If Kings Can Be Hermits, Then We Are All Monkeys' Uncles
      4. Magnolias from Moscow

    8. Linnaeus and Darwin's Grandfather
      1. The First Unmasking of Nature
      2. Ordering Nature by Budding and Full-Breasted Sexuality
      3. Four Metaphors in Three Generations

  • Bibliography
  • Index

    From Publishers Weekly

    Reviews

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