I Have Landed by Stephen Jay Gould, Harmony Books/Jonathan Cape (June), $25.95/拢17.99, ISBN 0609601431
ON 11 September 1901, Stephen Jay Gould鈥檚 maternal grandfather arrived in the US, a 14-year-old immigrant from Hungary. With him, he had his mother, sisters and $6.50. Gould intended to make a pilgrimage to Ellis Island, New York, on the centenary of his family鈥檚 arrival, but his plane was diverted after the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Gould writes movingly of these two events at the beginning and end of his latest book, I Have Landed. This is his tenth and last volume of essays based on the series he contributed to Natural History magazine for 300 months 鈥渦ninterrupted by illness, hell, high water, or the World Series鈥�.
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With his customary originality and huge enthusiasm for argument, Gould tackles a wide range of subjects that include why Darwin hardly ever used the word 鈥渆volution鈥�; whether Vladimir Nabokov鈥檚 professional fascination with lepidoptery enhanced or inhibited his literary career; and, pertinently, creationist attacks upon the study of evolution. Here, too is an essay on the humbling implications of the human genome data which, by showing we have only about one-quarter the genes widely predicted as necessary to direct such massively complex organisms as ourselves, mark 鈥渢he failure of reductionism鈥� in biological research.
Be warned: this is not a book for the bedside table. It sets the mind racing too wildly for sleep.