I came home this evening from work and found a box from Amazon.com! A big surprise, of course! I quickly opened it to find “The Beak of the Finch” by Jonathan Weiner, sent to me as a gift from Rebecca!
This book (already added to my allconsuming.net list on the right) is a book I’ve been wanting to read for years. I first came across a copy in a bookstore back when I was still an undergrad student. The price was beyond what I could afford then but I made up my mind that I had to read the book. I never did find it again (in a library or elsewhere) and so I was always recommending the book to friends without ever having read it myself! And now finally I can and goddamn! I’ve been right to recommend this book! 😀
Oh, I didn’t really say what the book was about, did I? Well, on the Galapagos islands, where Darwin collected many specimens on his voyage on the Beagle, are found 13 species of finches (also known as Darwin’s finches as he was the first person to collect the specimens.) Now due to the weirdness (even to a biologist) of island biogeography, populations of animals and plants on islands like this evolve at a fairly quick rate. Therefore a detailed, systematic study of any such population should give you all the real data to show evolution on the march! And that is what “The Beak of the Finch” documents along with a very well written exposition on Darwin’s theory with all the requisite history to fill in the spaces.
Read this book!