Reviews

Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould

jhrcook's review

adventurous informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.25

Bully for Brontosaurus is a collection of some of Gould’s short essays on natural history organized into a few different topics. As expected, they were thoroughly researched, informative, and well written. Gould has a novelist’s style of writing, but an esteemed academic’s devotion to accuracy that makes his essays and books perfect for any biologists who enjoy reading. I also appreciate his intellectual fairness to people who have come before us and lived in a different time. He judges their reasoning, but doesn’t scrutinize their morality through the lens of modern times. Bully for Brontosaurusis both a great place to start reading Gould’s work and a continuation of one’s collection.

harpie's review

informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

zhelana's review

3.0

Rather than a book with a thesis sentence this is largely a collection of disconnected essays. Most of them are about biology, but the last chapter worth of them are about astronomy. He seems to take aim at current event issues, but then they are no longer current events by the time the book is published, and certainly not now, although one may still wonder how we have someone as incredibly stupid and uninformed as Scalia on the Supreme Court. There were a lot of essays about Victorian biologists I'd never heard of, and why they were wrong, or why they were accidentally right, or even, on occasion, why they were actually right - but those were few and far between. There were some interesting essays on platypuses and how they aren't really primitive even though biologists keep acting like they are. My main problem with this book is that I picked up a book called brontosaurus hoping for some information about dinosaurs, and specifically what happened to my childhood hero the brontosaurus. There were only 2 essays on dinosaurs in the entire 500 page book, and I was greatly disappointed (although I did learn yet another new theory of what happened in the brontosaurus/apatosaurus story. If I had a dollar for every different story I've heard about the two, I could make a car payment). I guess I will look again for a book about dinosaurs to read. Anyway Stephen Jay Gould is good at making science approachable by anyone in some essays, but in others he approaches topics that I can't imagine the average person actually cares about.

david_r_grigg's review

4.0

Paperback

barryhaworth's review

4.0

This book has been sitting on my bedside table for a very long time, with me picking it up occasionally to read an essay as a bit of night time reading. Very interesting and thought provoking essays, though not the sort of thing that lends itself to a continuous read (at least for me).

Essays range over a variety of subjects, from natural history to history of science to mathematics to astronomy. A recurring theme is that things are generally more complicated than they appear - folklore about historical events never tells the full story, and people who are remembered for particular reasons are very likely quite different if the full story is known.

kesterbird's review

5.0

I loved these essays. Some of them are dated, but more in a poignant "oh, he thought he was witnessing the end of this debate and I sure wish he'd been right" way than a "this is no longer applicable" way. I learned stuff. I was fascinated. I'm sad it's over.

I'll be looking up more of his essay collections.

gllyons's review against another edition

4.0

A mixed bag as any compilation essay book is. Some of the essays are great some are just so so. Overall it is a quite good.