A review by ailsaod
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

 Ok this book has pretty much single handedly re-ignited my interest in fossils. I already knew about the Burgess Shale from an Attenborough documentary but I had no idea about the sheer magnitude of stuff preserved there. I have not read a book by Gould before though I have certainly heard of him and this book is pretty challenging for a popular science book - I enjoyed it a lot but you will learn more than you ever wanted on arthropod leg arrangements. Also this book was published in the late '80s and I really want to know how our knowledge has improved since then.

I will say that it is probably best to have a pretty good understanding of evolution before going in as some of the Gould's opinions later on are on the controversial side.