author : Stephen Jay Gould

This is a collection of some of Gould’s essays from The New York Review of Books. They are “essays” rather than reviews: Gould calls them commentaries on the books themselves. That is, rather than review each book itself for style, coverage, or whatever, Gould writes an essay on the subject matter of the book, and on how well the book itself addresses that context. Since the books are mostly about evolution and geology, Gould is very well placed to perform this exercise. On reading Gould’s own essays, we learn more about the subject matter than we learn about the reviewed book; in some cases we possibly learn more about the subject matter than we would do so reading the book in question.

There is no bibliographic information provided on the original essays publication dates. However, there is a statement in the colophon about the accompanying drawings, which are dated 1963–1987. So the essays themselves are 30–50 years old, and we need to be aware that what we have learned is potentially somewhat out of date.

Not everything is dated, however. In his essay on Evelyn Fox Keller’s biography of Barbara McClintock, A Feeling for the Organism, he notes:

Despite its age, many of the more philosophical points are timeless. In his essay on Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin’s Not in Our Genes, which discusses the nature-nurture debate and the need for holistic thinking, Gould opines:

The writing is intellectual, punchy rather than precious, and Gould lavishes praise and heaps scorn where it is due. He enjoys skewering Capra’s holism credentials in The Turning Point:

Again, on Capra:

However, he reserves his most withering scorn for his penultimate essay, on Jeremy Rifkin’s Algeny (a word coined to mean the modern alchemy of genes):

It’s not all scorn, it’s just that scorn is so quotable! There is interesting biology and geology (although some out of date), good writing, and trenchantly stated opinions. All in a series of bite sized chapters suitable for intermittent reading. Read for how to write essay-style reviews, even if not for the reviews themselves.

With its small pages and large, widely spaced type, Gould has produced more a long pamphlet than a book, a small island of sanity in a vast sea of millennial madness. (And yes, he points out that 'millennium' really does have two 'n's.) He explores three questions:

• What is the Millennium? How has it changed from a religious question about a period of a thousand years from an arbitrary starting point, to a calendrical question about the start of the n-thousandth year. And a look at past millennial madnesses.
• When is the Millennium -- 2000 or 2001? (The question arises because there was no year zero.) The 20th century officially started in 1901, yet 2000 is the clear winner this time, so what has changed?
• Why are we interested in calendrical events at all?

All this in his usual sane, clear style -- although rather more religion than I might have liked -- and fortunately very little about baseball!