It was with bittersweetness that I read Gould's final collection of Natural History essays. I started with his first, Ever Since Darwin, and read every collection. I learned a great deal about evolution and natural history. It instilled a love for the genre and I've gone on to read other authors in the field, Sean Carroll and Neil Shubin come to mind.

Gould and Sagan were two of the giants popularizing science when I was growing up. We will not see their like again, but we do see variations on a theme and that's good enough. ( )

Gould is one of my favorite authors. I adore his books of essays. This one, however, did not do it for me, perhaps because the essays are more personal to Gould and less generally informative about science and history. ( )

Where science and history and baseball meet.

Another excellent collection of thought provoking essays. A nice additional flavour we get bits of his family history and obscure historical anecdotes to season the usual diet of evolutionary science.

This is what he is best at. ( )

Gould finished this collection after 9/11, and after his diagnosis with terminal cancer. His fundamental decency and honour shine through. ( )