Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 352 pages
- Published by: Vintage May 30, 1995
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 067973337X
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0679733379
-
Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
- Weighs: 8.8 ounces
Product Review
Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend twenty years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are four hundred at the time of the author's visit, or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about twenty generations of finches -- continuously.
Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
From Publishers Weekly
Weiner follows scientists Peter and Rosemary Grant who, for the past twenty years, have studied the continuing evolution of the beaks of finches in the Galapagos Islands.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reader ReviewsWeiner's The Beak of the Finch is a positively brilliant work on the topic of evolution. A great introduction for the student of evolutionary biology, or the layman. Weiner's book destroys two of the greatest myths about evolution. 1. It's slow. 2. It can't be observed. The study of the Galapagos Finches not only proves the importance of evolution as a contemporary subject but as one that can be observed RIGHT NOW in the world around us. It's almost astonishing to see how simple evolution truly is, how it occurs in quantifiable baby steps that we can see, if we only take the time to carefully observe. Weiner not only demystifies evolution, but makes it as a topic, thoroughly accessible to the interested layman. His prose is neither dry nor technical and in fact, makes for quite an enjoyable read. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
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