Centring on the discovery in the Burgess Shale of 530 million year old fossils unique in age, preservation and diversity, this book challenges perceptions about man's place in the history of life.

Sheds new light on a dilemma that has plagued thinking people since the Renaissance. Instead of having to choose between science and religion, Gould asks, why not opt for the golden resolution that accords dignity and distinction to both? Gould concludes that science defines the natural world, religion our moral world.

Stephen Jay Gould's writings on history - both of the natural world and of the study of that natural world - had made him a household name by the time of his death in 2002. This work contains a selection of Gould's writing, including some of the most famous of his essays and extracts from his major books.

For millennia the animals that populated the earth had four toes on each foot, or six. If evolution had taken a tiny shift - if our ancestors had inherited a couple of genes in a different form - our canonical number, based on our fingers and toes, might be eight instead of ten. This book deploys this, which is one of the oddities of history.

Argues that progress and increasing complexity are not inevitable features of the evolution of life on Earth. This book states that if we wish to see grandeur in life, we must discard our selfish and anthropocentric view of evolution and learn to see it as Darwin did, as the unfathomably rich source of 'endless forms most beautiful and wonderful'.

Evolutionary theory is the theme that binds together these essays on such seemingly disparate topics as the feeding habits of flamingos, flowers and snails that change from male to female and sometimes back again, and the extinction from baseball of the .400 hitter.