I’ve never read anything by Stephen Jay Gould until I started this book, Wonderful Life, the other day. Even with the depressing conclusions he comes to in statements like “Thus, physics and astronomy relegated our world to a corner of the cosmos, and biology shifted our status from simulacrum of God to a naked, upright ape” or “‘Perhaps we are only an afterthought, a kind of cosmic accident, just one bauble on the Christmas tree of evolution”, I enjoy his writing. It flows, and there are plenty of references to classics. Gould knew literature, which makes his ability to write rather unsurprising.

Its a topic I care more about than heavy theology writing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy reading about baptism and the covenant and other theological topics like the New Perspective… but Natural History just gets my blood pumping.