Eight Little Piggies

Few writers of popular science have given more pelasure to more readers than Stephen Jay Gould...He packs a clout few science writers can match

New York Times Book Review

Who could resist a title like that - and knowing the author, who wouldn't surmise that Gould...demonstrat that five fingers and five toes are not the primordial/canonical mammalian standard...Essays that reveal Gould in midlife, as passionate and articulate as ever, but older and wiser

Kirkus Reviews

Like the master, Darwin, [Gould] has a gift for metaphor

Newsday

Miraculously good

The Times

Remarkable... Gould takes his readers on tough-minded rambles across the visible surface of things... extraordinary

Guardian

Gould has a talent for making the scientific, and particularly the revolutionary, interesting and striking

Sunday Times

A lovely mixture of bizarre facts, nice arguments, clever insights into the workings of evolution and a quality of writing that can make your skin prickle... Gould has given us a feast

Nature

Rather than serving up his science cold, Gould invariably puts a spin on it, taking his readers down the innumerable byways of history, literature and personal anecdote along the route to his theoretical conclusions

Independent on Sunday

Reading Gould is not merely a pleasure but an education and a chronicle of the times

Observer

The most readable of scientists

Financial Times

One of the best essayists in the business. He uses his wide background knowledge as a bridge to entice non-scientists into sharing the excitement of scientific discovery and the curious, convoluted path of new ideas through history

Scotsman