I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History

US: Harmony, 2002. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged Here is bestselling scientist Stephen Jay Gould's tenth and final collectio n based on his remarkable series for Natural History magazine-exactly 300 c onsecutive essays, with never a month missed, published from 1974 to 2001. Both an intellectually thrilling journey into the nature of scientific disc overy and the most personal book he has ever published, I Have Landed marks the end of a significant chapter in the career of one of the most acclaime d and widely read scientists of our time. Gould writes about the themes that have defined his career, which his readers have come to expect and celebrate, casting new light upon them and conveying the ideas that science professionals exchange among themselves (minus the technical jargon). Here, of course, is Charles Darwin, from his centrality to any sound scientific education to little-known facts about his life. Gould touches on subjects as far-reaching and disparate as feathered dinosaurs, the scourge of syphilis and the frustration of the man who identified it, and Freud's "evolutionary fantasy." He writes brilliantly of Nabokov's delicately crafted drawings of butterflies and the true meaning of biological diversity. And in the poignant title essay, he details his grandfather's journey from Hungary to America, where he arrived on September 11, 1901. It is from his grandfather's journal entry of that day, stating simply "I have landed," that the book's title was drawn. This landing occurred 100 years to the day before our greatest rece.