A Story of Evolution in Our Time - The Beak of the Finch

This is the third book about Darwin and the evolution of the ideas about life's origins that I've read in the last year, and it's a really good complement to other books. It's precise, concise, and relatively easy to follow, given the complexity of the topics that are addressed. The work done by the scientists described in the book is amazing, and the conditions under which they do it are remarkable -- basically camping on an inhospitable island (inhospitable for humans) for months at a time.
It's a cliche to say that I felt like I was there on the Galapagos, but it's true. But I also felt like I'd be happy with a tourist visit of a few days, rather than endless months crawling around in cactus in the equatorial sunshine and desert conditions to watch a few birds.

I found the drawings of various animals, especially finch beaks, to be helpful in explaining the ideas laid out in the text. As a person who can barely tell a cardinal from a bluejay, I'm amazed by the way that scientists can differentiate between individual birds and between related species. It's a combination of hard work, intense study and, I think, an innate attention to detail that few people have.

The book also makes good on its promise to explain why and how evolution is happening, and why scientists now believe that it happens much faster than ever imagined. This is a humbling thought for us, but it also makes sense. Since everything in the environment is interacting with everything else, it seems perfectly reasonable to think that variations are always arising that have a minute advantage over other variations, and that those "better" variations will outperform for a while. And then, as the environment changes (and environment can be weather, predators, microbes, amount of cosmic rays), it's quite reasonable to think that a new variation will win the next round. And so on. This book brings to light the hard work and research that is proving this to be true.

Millions of years ago, whales were land dwelling animals.

And amazingly, their trek from land to see only took five million years based on the fosil record.

By going to the Gallopogas and examining Charles Darwin's own finches, Weiner's book shows us evolution on speed where evolutionary events can occur over a short time.

This finding of course puts paid to the Creationist scread that evolution cannot be "proved" but more importantly it points out that evolution has a dynamic quality not previously considered: an ability to sometimes rapidly respond to changes in the biosphere.

This finding as alluded of course has great meaning for seemingly short lapses in the fosil record here on Earth.

However it also points interesting possiblity in contemplating extra terrestrial life. I find it interesting in the least that the first planets found off world were radically different from anything found in our solar system.

Among other implications (to be sure) Weiner's findings may also put paid to the notions of those like Peter Ward who suggest that extremely long time periods are required for life to evolve. (In this regard, please see Ward's excellent Rare Earth wherein he suggests that life off Earth is probably rare -- among other reasons -- due to the fact that it took so long to evolve to intelligence here on Earth.) If the off worlders are as adaptable as even Darwin's finches, exobiology -- like the study of extra solar planets themselves -- might be not only weirder than we imagine, but maybe even weirder than we can imagine.

Before closing I think this book also deserves high praise for the fact that so much more was learned when researchers were willing to simply return to the source of Darwin's intitial inquiry and in so doing learn the even greater lesson that nature is willing to teach us as long as we're willing to continue listening.

"Evolution in action" takes place day in and day out and has been measured and documented as part of a long running study of the 13 species of Darwin finches that are to be found on the Galapagos Islands. It's ironic that the behaviour of these eponymous finches would in fact contradict the great scientist himself. Darwin believed that evolution was a slow, linear, process that took place over extremely long periods of time. Weiner disagrees, and by looking at the study Rosemary and Peter Grant have been conducting with Darwin's finches since 1973, he is able to say that natural selections' "action is neither rare nor slow. It leads to evolution daily and hourly, all around us, and we can watch." He goes on to say "the closer you look at life, the more rapid and intense the rate of evolutionary change."
You can't get a closer look than the fractional adaptations in THE BEAK OF THE FINCH which are due to environmentally induced changes. Weiner says the Grant's study shows differentiation in beak size in accordance with environmental dictates. Fluctuations such as drought and rainy seasons caused a concomitant change in food source - hard seeds were more plentiful in dry times and tiny, thinner, seeds emerged in wet periods. A direct correlation with adaptations of the birds beaks was shown to exist. There was a measurable increase in the average beak size in the generation following a drought and a selection bias towards those with slimmer beaks when the tiny seeds were in abundance.
The book's title notwithstanding, the Darwin finch study is not the only subject looked at. There are examples of many other everyday-evolution experiments. The most common being those using Drosophilia or Fruit Flies. Also those with other bird species such as sparrows, and speaking of beaks, why go any further that the appropriately named crossbills. Darwin and his own 20 year study in the Galapagos, naturally comes in for frequent mention throughout. In summary this is a well written book, easily managed by non-specialists but also enjoyable for biologists.

During my summer of research work at Georgia Tech to develop lessons for my students, I was able to work in the field of evolutionary biology. This book was recommended to me by my mentor professor as a must read. Let's just say that this book will change your views on evolution. The press likes to sensationalize that there is little direct evidence for evolution, that the word theory means that it may not be true (when used as a cultural term) but this book will provide that direct evidence. Yes, evolution is a fact, and it exists, and it has been observed in nature (not millions of years like it has always been presented. If the members of the Cobb County (Ga) school board had read this book, they never would have tried to place those quirky little stickers into their biology textbooks. From the believer to the skeptic, this is a must read. Jonathan Weiner (who teaches at Columbia University) has written a poignant and elegant book describing the groundbreaking research conducted by the grants in the Galapagos Islands. He spent time researching the empirical data compiled by the Grants to tell a great story. Definitely deserving of the Pulitzer Prize and any other award. As a science teacher, this has become required reading for my AP students during Christmas and may become the same for my other classes. Spend the $14, learn a lot, and become educated in what is still a controversial subject in education for many Americans. This book should be in everyone's library.

Weiner has written a great book on evolutionary science. Instead of a frozen doctrine whose outlines are generally agreed upon as a quasi-religion, Weiner demonstrates how the modalities of evolution - how it actually occurs in nature - are still under investigation. It is a snapshot of an evolving science, carried out over a lifetime of research by two distinguished scientists.
One of the particular things they are attempting to observe directly is a speciation event - the creation of a new species of finch - which we long assumed must take place over geologic time and hence is unobservable. But in the process, Weiner reviews the notion of evolution, with fascinating tidbits from Darwin's original research and thoughts on these same finches of the Galopagos. It is a brilliant portrait of the cutting edge in science as well as a detailed review of many basic notions of evolution.
It is also a beautifully written book, indeed a masterpiece of elucidation. And it is all hard science, rather than the pseudo-scientific pap that passes for it in so many popular magazines today. While its rigor makes the book a challenge to read, it is well worth the effort.
Recommended, one of the best pieces of scientific journalism I ever read.

The book is the convergence of three nice but unfortunately rare events:
first, a well written and interesting book.
second, good structured and well executed science.
third, the rarest of the three, good explanation at the layman's level of specific science and it's wider implications.
The book is primarily about the specific research done on Daphne Major, a small uninhabited island in the Galapagos Islands, by Peter and Rosemary Grant, concerning the measurements of beaks of Darwin's finches. Expertly woven into this discussion is a good understanding of evolutionary processes, a nice description of how science really works and why, along with enough human interest that it captivates the reader's interest and rightfully garnered the book a pulitzer prize. It's structure is primarily chronological as we are introduced to the Grant's now 20 years plus research project, the people who did it and the science underlying the effort. Other research is introduced as necessary to make or expand the point, so you learn a little about guppies, Darwin's particular studies, Hawaiian fruit flies, sticklebacks in BC; but mostly the details are taken from, are about the 13 species of Darwin's finches, what they eat, and the last 20 years of weather on these islands described as Nature's own biological laboratory: unique, simple enough to study, yet persuasive in the theories formed by people enchanted by their biological diversity stemming from just a few individuals lucky enough to cross the Pacific from South America.
The take home message is simple enough. Through 20 generations of finches, data has been carefully collected concerning the beaks, the food, the offspring, the blood and from this mass of data has emerged the proof that populations evolve in response to their environment; that is, natural selection(NS) is seen, not just in the propositions concerning fossils, but in the time frame of a PhD thesis, evolution happens. Like an often heard mantra, the phrase, "speciation has never been seen to occur" emerges from the writings of the Young Earth Creationists(YEC). This book is a direct reply to this idea, look and listen the author (and the Grants) seem to say to their most vocal opponents, evolution and NS happen all around us, it is just too complex to be clearly proven outside of the unique environment of the Galapagos.
If you have any interest in the topic of creation-evolution-design this ought to be one of the first 10 books on your to-be-read list.
thanks for reading this short review.
richard williams

The first third of this book, describing the research of Peter and Rosemary Grant on the "Darwin's Finches" on the island of Daphne Major, is well worthy of the Pulizer Prize that this book earned. The Grants, by cataloguing every finch (including beak measurements in three dimensions, as well as wing-span and weight) on the small island, were able to show the world that natural selection can indeed by seen in our lifetimes and proven scientifically through hypotheses and validation. It is a major achievement in evolutionary studies and deserves to be more widely known. Weiner continues his book beyond the Grant's research, describing the work of evolutionary biologists who are attempting to make the next breakthrough as well-- to show a new species being born, a true "origin" of species--is not quite as logical or well-presented, likely caused by the myriad different ways in which today's scientists are attempting to make this discovery. In the end, Weiner pulls his theme together, and brings back how the Grants, their research assistants and many associates continue to build upon their earlier work with new techniques, and what they may be able to tell the world next.
This book had an additional bonus for us--half of the drawings included in the book were done by the youngest of the Grants' two daughters, Thalia, who happened to be the wife of our tour group leader, Greg Estes, and was able to join us on our trip. A natural birder, and an expert on the Galapagos since she had been coming to the islands since she was five, Thalia and Greg are now working on several projects involving the Galapagos islands, their history and their fauna. Weiner's book calls out for a sequel in a few years, and I wouldn't be surprised if Thalia's name isn't associated with it in some way.

Weiner sets the reader down with the ghost of Darwin, on the Galapagos Islands where the Grants have been studying since 1973. He introduces us to 'Darwin's finches,' the same birds Darwin observed and wrote about in "Origin of the Species".
We're introduced to a populationg that is perfect for evolutionary studies--a limited number of species in a closed ecosystem on an isolated island. Darwin couldn't have known what his observations would lead to so many years later, but Weiner shares with us the Grants meticulous study of over 20 generations of finches. Thousands of individual birds were measured, and their progeny tracked. Through this book, we see what they saw--evolution in action.
Weiner weaves facts into a nice story. The book is engaging and reads like a novel, so much so that my 13 year-old daughter is now reading it.
The conclusions (and no, this isn't a spoiler) are that evolution by natural selection occurs and that selection can occur quickly (it's not always a slow process). Weiner (and the Grants) also touches on speciation in fish populations, and bacterial and viral evolution.
This was required reading in an introductory evolution class in college. I hope, someday, students in high school will be assigned this book. It was excellent, and will probably be wrapped up as Christmas gifts for a few of my friends and family.

I have read much on evolution, and the evolution controversy in (primarily) the United States. This book does a wonderful job of demonstrating how scientists, right now, are recording and observing natural selection in action. Before I read this book I was not aware of how much information we really have about evolution and natural selection occurring in "the wild" on an everday basis. This book provides thorough mathematical evidence and predictive models of how natural selection changes the morphology of Darwin's Finches on the Galapogos Islands. It interleaves that story with a decent primer on evolution and snippets of other, similar research, going on right now too.

For example, it describes some fasicinating experiments conducted showing how quickly natural selection will change the color of the storeian guppies based solely on the color of the rocks in the pools in which the guppies live, and the frequency of predation. It is amazing. As I read more about evolution, I see that rates of evolution vary widely. Evolution operating slowly (over 1000's or millions of years) is pretty obvious. This book provides a window into the amazing world of "rapid" evolution.

The best part about it is that it is as much a journalistic endeavor as a well-written book. This is NOT a polemic about why evolution is better than other ideas. This book simply reports the facts. If you don't understand evolution or believe it can be true after reading this book, then you aren't really trying to understand.

Finally, this book deserves the awards and accolades. It is well-written, well-researched, and well-organized. I don't give many books five stars, but this one is worth it. I would recommend it for anyone: scientists, kids, and just people interested in learning and fascinated by the world around us.

Should you read this book? Absolutely, no doubt, no matter who you are and here’s why. It’s about evolution and the scientific method – both of which cannot be denied but are. A brief story … I once got into an argument with an Evangelical Born Again Christian about something, I don’t remember what, but I do remember I invoked radio-carbon dating and she came back with something of the sort: “That’s a hoax! It’s simply not true – they made it up!” Upon which I asked her if she understood what the scientific method was. Whereupon her husband came to her rescue, came between us, shooing her away, and accused me of “browbeating” her. These types of encounters should not happen, not in the USA. This book should be required reading and study in all high schools, all across America. It makes evolution and the scientific method easy to understand. It is a great story and it’s true! It’s the story of evolution on the Galápagos archipelago, via the study of Darwin’s finches by a team of scientists led by Peter and Rosemary Grant of Princeton University. It covers twenty years, the study (1973-93); and is ongoing still. The finches are famous! AND – it’s written like a thriller.
Me – I don’t need to be convinced – I’ve been an evolutionist since my first Anthropology class, back in ’68, “Beginnings Of Mankind.” I was an Evolutionary Psychologist before the words joined and evolved into a new Field of study. I was a Sociobiologist before E.O Wilson wrote Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, and the newly evolved human females became feminists, and wanted Edward Wilson tarred and feathered. Ha! But enough about me.
Like I and others have said – the book reads like a thriller. ‘Oh my god! The big flood! What will happen to the birds? Oh my god! Not a drop of rain for over a year! What will happen to the birds?’ By the way, the book won a Pulitzer. It’s even got pictures! Sketches by Darwin himself and the Grants’ daughter, Thalia Grant — beautiful. That’s part of The Method – methodical observation and documentation. And measurement, down to fractions of millimeters, over time, over years and years. (You can see evolution happen!) And study and analysis, and repetition. Did I say how thrilling it is? And you learn things, not only about finches (a finch can live for fifteen years.); but about yourself as well, the most dominant of species to inhabit the earth. Did you know, “A single wipe of toilet paper comes away with as many as two trillion individuals of the Bacteroides species, twenty billion individual enterobacteria, and dozens of other species that have never been named by science.” (pg. 258) Did you know, “ … people are trying to ban the teaching of evolution while their own cotton crops are failing because of evolution.”? (pg. 255)
What would you say if I said I think that the very process, evolution, might help explain why the Paradoxical Intervention can work in psychotherapy, when going directly at the problem will fail. What about how struggle leads to variation and Easy Street to fusion, and fusion can lead to extinction. Stress can be a good thing. It’s true! Cooperation isn’t always a good thing. It’s true! Sometimes misfits save the day! Sometimes separation and isolation are a good thing. Sometimes being picky is a very, very, very good thing. And on and on it goes – the learning and the thinking – the evolving of adaptations, the tools that change the world. Darwin wrote life was a, “web of complex relations,” —the slightest change, the smallest variation having profound effects, the difference between life and death. Not all that dissimilar from Tolstoy’s “coincidence of circumstance,” or DeLillo’s “infinite regression,” or Wallace’s “permutations of complications.”
Upon reading this book, in the winter of 2015, I thought … maybe there’s another mechanism of evolution besides natural and sexual selection? I’ll call it “un-natural selection” and it’s unique to Homo sapiens, thinking man, or the species that became aware of itself. Self-conscious. For better or worse. Unnatural selection is homicide. It is what the terror group ISIS practices.
I have argued that natural selection is no longer a relevant mechanism in the new, flat, fused, technologically advanced modern world, which that then only allows for sexual selection as a mechanism driving human variation. But now, along comes ISIS and their ilk, who now practice homicide as a way to advance change. If you don’t merge, fuse with them, they will kill you and steal your children, rape your women; and teach them, the children, (cultural evolution) to be like them—killers. If you/they can’t stomach it – they’ll kill you and your genes. If your offspring can’t adapt – they’ll kill them, too. Too weepy and you’re dead. Not tough-minded enough and you’re dead. Too sensitive and you’re dead. Too open-minded and you’re dead. Evolution by unnatural selection – homicide. It’s not the first time it’s been tried. The Nazis tried it. Thought the Jew an inferior species worthy of extinction, useless. Not even good for slavery.
And if that isn’t enough to convince you to read this book, consider this. Now, in the USA there seems to be yet another movement of evolutionary consequence – the decision not to mate. (See: Selfish, Sallow & Self-Absorbed: Sixteen writers on the decision not to have kids. Spinster by Kate Bolick.) Yes, the “sex chase” is expensive. It can be exhausting and full of psychological and emotional risk. Children are expensive, also. But the consequence of not engaging, of not participating is extinction of your genes, which are totally unique to you, because of the process, and perhaps just what the doctor ordered – to keep us strong and healthy, to keep us going. Perhaps your prodigy is the next Darwin, or Freud, or hero – a super hero who saves the world! I’m not sure what that says, what it means, that the self-conscious animal, our “mind the beak of the finch” (pg.287 ) — that we choose not to mate. Left in charge, having taken control, we’ve mucked it up. Read this book. You tell me – what did we do?
“We are not completed as we stand, this is not our final stage.” (p.299)
Winter 2015

Peter and Rosemary Grant study the theory of evolution on the Galapagos islands. The pair spend twenty years and come back ever season to get quantifiable results of how several species of finch, thrive, perish and survive on a closed environment. What Darwin said in his theory, the Grants prove with scientific evidence. One of their more startling findings is the difference between death and survival during several years of drought is only one-half of a millimeter in the size of a finch's beak. Jonathan Weiner won the Pulitzer Prize for this work and he deserves it. The research is solid and the presentation is written in mostly non-scientific terms. Great read and even better evidence that Creationism is not worthy of even being discussed, much less taught side-by-side with Evolution.

Beak of the Finch appears to be unique among popular evolution texts in the way that the author illustrates his points by highlighting measurable changes in the physical attributes of animals to prove the validity of Darwin's thesis: that plants and animals, through selective breeding, sprout biologically advantageous features.

His main subject are (no surprise) the finches first recorded in detail by Darwin in the 19th century. A band of researchers making meticulous observations and measurement over three decades, have compiled a catalog of data so extensive that meaningful averages have been firmly established to show how certain species of finch have responded within a handful of generations (or less!) to pressures exerted on them by their local environment. Clear variations in beak depth and width have been observed in response to adverse weather, bountiful food, scarce food, plant changes, nesting habitat availability and more. Such factors have directly altered these finches -- within the scale of far less than a human lifetime -- where it was once thought that "evolution in action" could _never_ be observed. True, the measurable average change is neither enormous nor startlingly obvious, but it's real none the less.

Interspersed with this tale of observation and measurement is a good narration of how Darwin himself gradually shifted from pious adherence to Creationism to a truth he could no longer deny in the face of what he considered to be incontrovertible evidence.

A good book, but it loses steam towards the end as the observations of the finches is not quite meaty enough alone to fill an entire book. The author moves on to some other notable examples of observable evolution such as moths and apple flys. This material, while casually interesting, made for less compelling reading.

I am going to the Galapagos Islands in February, and The Beak of the Finch was on our suggested reading list. I was not familiar with the book, but I found it to be a fascinating study of evolution as a whole and Darwin's finches on Galapagos in particular. The book won a Pulitzer, so it clearly is well written and covers an important subject. The descriptions of the work done over many years by Peter and Rosemary Grant from Princeton are amazing. The details that must be tracked in trying to follow generations of finches on Daphne Major in the Glalapagos are just overwhelming, even though I have to admit that I found I was actually learning more about the little birds than I wanted to know. I highly recomment the book especially if you have plans to travel to the Galapagos Islands. I have no doubt that it has changed my perception of what I am going to see when I get there.

Fabulous work that follows two researchers observing and documenting evolution of finches on a Galapagos Island. Weiner smoothly integrates Darwin’s studies and theories with current research proving evolution both in the field and in the lab.

This book rightfully won the Pulitzer. The author focuses his exposition on evolution on the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant, who study the finches of the Galapagos Islands. Over more than twenty years, the Grants have observed discernible changes in the dimensions of the finches' beaks as a result of environmental pressures in the islands. Weiner manages to incorporate this research with other recent projects on evolution into a work that is extraordinary in its depth and complexity while remaining absorbing and accessible to the average reader. He also exposes the evolution in action in pressing modern issues such as the resistance of pests to agrochemicals and bacteria to antibiotics. For anyone willing to open their mind, this book offers powerful proof for evolution.

The style of this book is very novelistic. If you like non-fiction works to be just-the-facts-ma'am without the literary trappings, this may not be the book for you. But if you like your facts served with a story (and don't we all), this is a fabulous find. Weiner tells the story of Peter and Rosemary Grant, who have spent years researching Darwin's Finches on the Galapagos Islands. He not only covers the basics of evolutionary theory well, but he also gives an enlightening and detailed account of what it is like to do field research, and explores several aspects of how evolution is both thought about and studied. His writing is easy to read and enjoyable, for scientists and non-scientists alike. Many of the chapters could be read as a separate essay, although there is a consistent thread of thought. This is one of my favorite non-fiction books. It treats an important scientific idea without a lot of technical jargon or intellectual arrogance.

This book rightfully won the Pulitzer. The author focuses his exposition on evolution on the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant, who study the finches of the Galapagos Islands. Over more than twenty years, the Grants have observed discernible changes in the dimensions of the finches' beaks as a result of environmental pressures in the islands. Weiner manages to incorporate this research with other recent projects on evolution into a work that is extraordinary in its depth and complexity while remaining absorbing and accessible to the average reader. He also exposes the evolution in action in pressing modern issues such as the resistance of pests to agrochemicals and bacteria to antibiotics. For anyone willing to open their mind, this book offers powerful proof for evolution.

The style of this book is very novelistic. If you like non-fiction works to be just-the-facts-ma'am without the literary trappings, this may not be the book for you. But if you like your facts served with a story (and don't we all), this is a fabulous find. Weiner tells the story of Peter and Rosemary Grant, who have spent years researching Darwin's Finches on the Galapagos Islands. He not only covers the basics of evolutionary theory well, but he also gives an enlightening and detailed account of what it is like to do field research, and explores several aspects of how evolution is both thought about and studied. His writing is easy to read and enjoyable, for scientists and non-scientists alike. Many of the chapters could be read as a separate essay, although there is a consistent thread of thought. This is one of my favorite non-fiction books. It treats an important scientific idea without a lot of technical jargon or intellectual arrogance.

I was assigned this book for my physical anthroplogy class, and all I can say is wow. The writing is fantastic and interesting (yet not bulky like most scientific writings). The research is superb, and the story is awesome. My generation grew up believing evolution is not a theory but a fact, but I was still taught that you couldn't "see" evolution because it took tons of years. The Grants blew that notion away in the Galapagos Islands, where they watched nature select for and against certain types of birds...within a twenty year time period! The book explains how variation comes about, the fusion and fission of species, and how separate yet similar we all are to one another. It's a fantastic book, and I recommend it to anyone looking into evolution, Darwin, or anthropology

The Beak of the Finch provides insight into the Grants' study of evolution and proof of the strength of Darwin's theory. It follows the Grants' systematic survey of the Galapoagos finches and explains the conclusions that can be drawn from the data. The book is interesting because it documents the study of the Grants, who are the first to actually try and observe natural selection and evolution in action. Moreover, it tells how evolution works in easily understandable and interesting language. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about evolution.

The first portion of this book is an interesting account of the fruits of 20 tedious years of biology fieldwork with the Galapagos finches. But the second part is scary, documenting the evolution of bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics, insects to become resistant to every new kind of pesticide (they all laugh at DDT now), and viruses such as AIDS to become resistant to any and all human tricks.
Weiner does not try to inject artificial drama into his book by writing too much about the personalities of the scientists. And there aren't any arch villains. So don't try to read this when you're distracted or tired.

This book was entertaining but difficult to read. It's sparatic nature and the lack of the steady story line made it difficult to stay focused on the main idea. But we would recommend it to other readers because of it's educational value of its content and how the information was interesting in explaining deeper into theories text books vaguely describes. Also, how the field studies were portrayed and daily life of scientists were explained was extremely well done. We also found that it was interesting that the Grants are still researching down in the Galapagos. Finally, the background on Darwin was interesting and showed a side of him that is often over looked.

Very few people gape at birds and consider that they play an intensely large role in the "Theory of Evolution", or in the world as a whole. This was at least my opinion of birds before reading The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. Reading this novel positively opened my eyes and made me think more of birds than just pesky little creatures with pretty colors. In this "Documentary" like novel, author Jonathan Weiner follows scientist Peter and Rosemary Grant around the Galapagos Islands, where famous Evolutionist Charles Darwin first fathomed the idea of Natural Selection and Evolution. Weiner does a great job making his reader feel as though they are apart of the Grants adventure in every step they take encompassing the Galapagos Islands to find and study one of the rarest birds the Galapagos Finch. Examining the ways in which Darwin's theory of Natural Selection affects the Finches Rosemary and Peter Grant travel the islands prepared to tackle the ways in which evolution occurs from year to year. With weather conditions that often decide which type of Finch will survive and which will die, The Grants prove that not only are they good at what they do, but they most importantly prove that Natural Selection does actually occur rapidly almost day to day, and not just every few thousand years. Rosemary and Peter, who have won numerous awards for their achievements, have also tackled the mystery of the number of different species of finches there are on the islands. In the novel Wiener states "The Grants team measurements of live Darwin Finches have surpassed the number of specimens in the worlds museums." This is defiantly one book that I would recommend to anyone, with a fascination of the ways in which evolution works, or even a love for birds!

As a professor of geology and natural history, I am commonly asked by my students how we scientists can be so sure that the process of organic evolution occurs today. The fossil record is rich with the evidence of species that have lived, bred, and then vanished, all in the distant past. From these data we can piece together the history of life on Earth, but cannot easily understand how the dynamics of evolution actually play out in real time. The Beak of the Finch, by Jonathan Weiner, vividly and enthrallingly presents exactly this kind of evidence. Summarizing a huge body of research carried out on Galapagos finch populations for over twenty years by Peter and Rosemary Grant of Princeton University, Weiner amazes the reader with a sweeping account of how severe climatic events have produced measurable evolutionary changes in wild bird populations in the Galapagos - in as little as one year!

In a narrative style that simultaneously preserves the scientific details of the Grants' research and inspires in the reader a sense of wonder and awe at the ubiquity and subtlety of natural selection, Weiner presents a lucid and accessible discussion of the Grants' methods of study, their findings, and the implications of those findings to our understanding of the ongoing parade of life, death and evolution on Earth. Merely a brief description of the Grants' method is awe-inspiring; these two scientists and their students have caught, measured, and cataloged every single individual finch on one isolated island, for over twenty years. The Grants know who has mated with whom, who hatched whom, and who among them survived or perished through drought, flood, and famine during more than two decades of meticulous research. Weiner describes in clear and compelling prose how natural evolutionary change can occur - and be measured - over timescales far shorter than a human lifetime.

Weiner goes further still, and presents for the reader a stunning account of how evolutionary dynamics are being studied today throughout the world, using rigorous and quantitative experiments. By discussing research on fruit flies, guppies, and microbes, Weiner forces the reader to confront the reality that modern evolutionary science is as precise, as measurable, and as `hard' as physics or chemistry. And as useful: some of the aspects of observable evolution that Weiner discusses include the recent development of antibiotic-resistant diseases, and the continuing arms-race of pesticide manufacturers against new varieties of insects that can ignore even DDT.

This book is required reading in my freshman-level course in Earth History, and in an advanced course I teach in Paleontology and Evolution. For anyone with an interest in natural history and the evolution of life, this book is a must-read. For anyone who rejects evolutionary theory because they perceive it to be `soft', lacking quantitative rigor or the option of an experimental approach, this book is a wake-up call to the age of modern biology. As a science professional and an educator, I give this book my highest recommendation.

Dr. Johnson R. Haas

First heard about the book when Weiner came to speak at my college several years ago, and was fascinated by his talk. The book didn't disappoint - it's a great discussion of evolution and the forces that drive it. I think it was written just at the forefront of the wave of "popular science for the masses" type books, so it represents the best of the genre. Difficult concepts are presented in an easy-to-follow format, without any of the dumbing down so often seen in books like this. In addition to being smart & well written I also found it a great read. Enjoy!

"The Beak of the Finch", subtitled, "A Story of Evolution in Our Time", is a truly amazing book. Its principle topic is the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant, who have been studying the finches of the Galapagos Islands ("Darwin's Finches") in great detail since 1973. They have collected and analyzed data on 24 generations and close to 19,000 individual birds. The result of their work is empirical proof of Darwin's theory of evolution, along with a tremendous amount of new data concerning the mechanisms of evolution and life. The author (Jonathan Weiner) quotes liberally from Darwin. Of course Darwin was not right in every detail, but modern work is validating much of the speculation of "Origin" and other works. Some points I gleaned:
(1)
Natural selection works much more quickly than Darwin or anyone else had, until recently, realized. Under extreme selection pressure the finches were recorded evolving in one direction, then another. The reason the pace has been misjudged by several orders of magnitude is that the effects follow environment, and tend to net out over long periods of time, leaving the impression of a much slower pace.
(2)
The theory of evolution has been rigorously proven through the traditional scientific method of exact hypothetical predictions confirmed with experiment and observation.
(3)
Stephen J. Gould mentions frequently that the observation of evolution is neither unknown or even rare. I learned from Weiner that observed incidents are not necessarily subtle or obscure, and learned about many fascinating specific cases.
(4)
American farmers have never realized a net gain against insects by use of insecticides. When the cotton fields were cleared of "pests" in the forties, adjacent species began invading their crops almost immediately. Pesticides, of course, select for pesticide resistant insects. Before pesticides were introduced farmers lost 7% of their crop to insects. In 1993 the number was 13% and has risen steadily since the first pesticide was introduced. The irony is that the farmers being destroyed by the inevitable forces of evolution are deep in the cotton/bible belt, where they are simultaneously (not all of them of course) trying to keep their schools from teaching evolution, thus crippling the chances of saving their crops.
(5)
Antibiotic resistance is, of course, taking the same course as pesticide resistance, threatening everyone's health. I had missed the point that the same fundie saying s/he doesn't "believe" in evolution is likely aware of one of it's most immediate effects, bacteria surging ahead in our ongoing war.
(6)
I gleaned a pretty good grasp of how divergence and speciation occur in the absence of geographical barriers. This has been a stumbling block to understanding for me, because the geographical separation requirement seemed too rare for the effects attributed to it. Very briefly, when a species is severely stressed by changing environment, there are commonly two or more survival niches best addressed by different evolved configurations (beak shape and overall size, in the case of the finches). Offspring suited to a niche survives, and by staying out of each others' niches, the separating groups survive and prosper. Speciation can occur if the conditions favoring the separation persist long enough.
(7)
"Preserving a species" is an almost meaningless statement. Species are constantly in evolutionary flux, and the descendents of animals we preserve will likely not be the same species, especially if we introduce or reintroduce them to the wild.

As someone who is fairly familiar with the intricacies of Darwin and the journey of the H.M.S. Beagle into the mysterious Galapagos Islands, I thought that this book brought up some very interesting things. It was an amazing recount of the Grant's parallel journey into the islands and it was told in a very entertaining, friendly style. The real genius of this book lies in Weiner's handling of Darwin's theories accompanied with the Grants tedious proof. Contained within Darwin's own major work, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," lies no actual documentation of the origin of any species, natural selection, or any favourtism, but, what it does stipulate, is that "evolution is the fundamental problem of Biology." Why this is important lies in the fact that with all the regarded tools of science and its method, there are miniscule amounts of research in the field of Evolution. However, the tedious research done by the Grants on Geospizinae (Galapagos Ground Finch) fills in many of the blanks that exist because of this lack of information. Although this book leaves many unanswered questions because it only skims the top of a very large scientific iceberg, but it is an amazing read because it details how evolution occurs daily and not just over millions of years.

As a biology major I consider myself well versed in the principles and concepts of evolutionary theory. I have read innumerous books on the subject, both popular and technical. Given this background I would have to say that The Beak of the Finch is easily one of the best introductions an individual can get on the subjects of natural selection, evolution, and speciation. Jonathan Weiner's smooth prose makes the reading both easy (relatively) and enjoyable. That being said this is by no means a "simple" introduction to evolution. The book delves deeply into the intricacies of natural selection as addressed by the Grants and numerous other researchers.

The only complaint I have with this book is that, in the final chapters, Weiner attempts to use the work of evolutionary biologists to address broad and far reaching concepts that fall far from the realm of biological science. This creates the potential for the reader to lose sight of the true importance of the book and become overwhelmed by other ideas that are difficult to connect with the Galapagos Islands, the Grants, Darwin, or evolution. However, this is a minor compliant and one not worth taking even half a star away from the book's rating for.

Frankly, I was a little disappointed with this book, but mostly because of my expectations. I felt like I knew the basics of evolution from high school science and wanted a more in-depth explanation of the theory. Weiner gives just that for the first 150 pages or so, describing the Grant family and their long-term study of finches on Daphne Major, a small island in the Galapagos where the Grants measure the beak and body of every single finch. The book is excellent through that section - Weiner is a great writer and uses various metaphors to illuminate the process whereby slight variations give certain birds an advantage.

Then the book seems to lose its way. We move away from the Grants and their field study in the Galapagos to a laboratory where one of the Grants' colleagues is trying to bring about evolutionary changes in guppy populations. Compared to the vivid descriptions of natural selection in the wild, this part is relatively uninteresting and repetitive. Weiner also begins to use increasingly artsy language, which breaks the flow of the scienfic descriptions and makes it seem that the author is searching for ways to fill the space.

It's easy to see why this book won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1995. The research is first-rate, and the first half of the book is great. The most interesting part describes a severe drought that hits the island in the late 70s, which reduces the finch population by 90% and demonstrates the importance of slight variations (e.g. beak size) for survival. The Grants actually witness the characteristics of the finch population change, as the finches with smaller beaks are unable to crack the large seeds and begin to die out. Weiner also does a good job narrating Darwin's development of the theory of evolution, often by using quotes from the Origin and excerpts from Darwin's journals and letters.

If you think you understand the theory of evolution fairly well, you probably do; this book won't tell you much you don't know. Rather, it's an account of how modern scientists are going about recording evolution in action, and it provides a good historical account of the development of Darwin's theory along the way.

A must read for evolutionary biology fans. A great story of how science works in the field - it is tough, grueling, frustrating, and requires enormous patience, not to say competence and passion. Thanks, Mr Weiner.

Darwin's greatest flaw was underestimating his own theory. Evolution by natural selection is not a slow, gradual process only taking place over tens of thousands of years. It is taking place before our very eyes. The Beak of the Finch gives first hand, irrefutable, accounts of this most beautiful process.

Everyone believes in evolution, whether they know it or not.

Quite a fun read. I've never doubted evolution yet this book opened a whole new perspective on the power of evolution to shape our world. Farmers creating super bugs in their fields by killing off the weak bugs and leaving only much stronger ones to survive...

I read this fascinating account of the Grants' twenty years' of work on Darwin's finches after visiting the islands and seeing the birds. The author's summary of their monumental studies is one of the best pieces of popular scientific writing I've ever read. It is lucid, well-organized, an excellent read, and (so far as this chemist can tell) scientifically accurate without getting bogged down in the enormous amount of detail involved in such a study. I had not realized the great speed with which selection pressures can produce changes in species--although, given the speed with which insects and microorganisms develop resistance to pesticides and antibiotics, in retrospect I note that there are ample clues on this. The human implications of the rapid adaptations of these organisms (bugs, bacteria) are frightening.

The authors spent years of their lives on a secluded island, taking painstakingly detailed measurements of the local finch population (literally checking every bird on the island time and time again), and how it changes in response to local shifts in the environment. It's a fairly simple and straightforward book, but it absolutely skewers every half-cocked objection you've ever heard to Darwin's work. Like Gould's Wonderful Life, the strength of the book is its remarkable ability to notice the little details, and use them as a foundation for a powerful statement on the history of life, and our place on this little rock.

"Beak" is perhaps the best popular book on evolution between Darwin and Dawkins.

Thoughtful, educated persons must know certain facts about the physical world. One of those facts is evolution. Evolution happens, it is not "just a theory."

As the author explains through the story of the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant, we can see natural selection operate in real time, season by season, in fish, birds, bacteria, and throughout the natural world. The explanation of evolution may be somewhat more open to debate but you can't participate meaningfully in the debate without being armed with some facts.

Don't bring a knife to an intellectual gunfight. Arm yourselves.

I have been raised in a highly fundamentalist environment, and had little idea what evolution or natural selection actually was before I read this book. It could not have been explained to me in a simpler or more understandable way. I was even more astonished to discover that evolution by means of natural selection is happening right now, not only to finches or guppies or soapberry bugs, but to every living thing around me. I am always seeking books that will make me think about the world in which I live. This is such a book.

This book is an eye opening and clear narrative about how adaptation via natural selection works. Debate about evolution usually centers on examining and interpreting fossilized evidence of ancient natural history. This book throws that out the window and shows that evolution is going on every day, all around us. Most of book makes this case by describing the decades long observation of Darwin's Finches in the Galapagos Islands by Peter and Mary Grant, a husband and wife team of Princeton professors. The Grants are able to correlate finch adaptations with environmental changes in the Galapagos. This, in itself, is a fascinating read but then the author, Weiner, brings the point home by describe several other examples in the closing chapters of the book. The two that stand out are moths that are evolving to pesticide resistance and common bacteria that evolving bacterial resistance. Did you know that we lose more agriculture to pests now than we did before modern agriculture began widespread pesticide use? All we are doing is speeding up the evolution of pests in an increasingly desperate and futile arms race to develop nastier pesticides.

I also have to say that believing Christians have nothing to fear in learning about evolution from this book. God has revealed some of him or herself in the books of the bible but the natural world all around you also contains clear evidence of the processes that God designed. If you truly want to become closer to God and to understand how God thinks then you must fearlessly learn from the evidence in the natural world all around you. History is full of examples of biblical interpretations that were discarded because of man's deepening insight of the natural world. Galileo was persecuted by the church of his day because he dared to suggest that the earth revolved around the sun. The Grant's also face a degree of persecution today when well meaning but fearful Christians try to drive their ideas and research underground and out of schools. Open yourself to understanding the gifts of the natural world you can observe all around you and you will grow closer to God.

This book is an account of Peter and Rosemary Grant's fascinating empirical study of "Darwin's finches" in the Galapagos Islands. That study, and the knowledge gained, is fascinating, and makes the book worth reading. However, in one important way, I was highly dissatisfied with the author's efforts. In describing the Grants' study, he clearly makes a case for natural-selection-driven adaptation and speciation. At the beginning of the book, he is rightfully excited that the Grants' work has provided empirical support of a logical, plausible hypthesis: that adaptation and speciation are driven by natural selection. As a good empiricist, he believes that a process that can be logically and plausibly articulated must still be doubted until it's empirically tested and proven. Here's the problem: the Grants' work provides empirical evidence that given a base of existing genetic material, natural selection and hybridization can change the distribution of those genes (ie, more or fewer large-beaked finches) in the population. But he doesn't honestly face the problem of creation of new genetic material: changing the percentage of large-beaked birds in a finch population is a different event in kind than the creation of an eye, the creation of a whole new genetic and organic phenomenon. When he tries to leap from beaks of finches to the creation of complex organs, he is satisfied with that which he previously derided: his proof that the eye could be created from natural selection is just a summary (a la Richard Dawkins) of the logical plausibility that 2% sight is more advantageous than 1% sight, so we can now imagine that the eye was created through natural selection. Weiner has disingenuously extrapolated from beaks to eyes by using the same type of nonempirical argument that he started off saying was unsatisfying and not a proper basis for scientific understanding. In the end, Weiner claims that the Grants' work has empirically proven much more than it really has. It is this weakness that makes his pompous dismissal of Creationists in the last chapter even more dissatisfying; such a conclusion is unwarranted by his argument and weakened by his argumentative flaw.

If you're only slightly interested in the ways the evolution works, then this is it. But beware to have some knowledge about the basics of evolution before moving on to this book. There's a bit of a steep learning curve when you're not all to familiair with Darwin's brilliant theory. It also gives a nice insight in the way scientists work.

We visited Galapagos recently and saw the island where most of the story takes place, but were not allowed to land. Although visiting the islands gives you a feel for the location, it is not necessary to enjoy the book. The findings of the research on the finch beaks were very enlightening, explaining how evolution can take place quite quickly. The size of the beaks of the finch would fluctuate back and forth, depending on the climate. It is explained very well.

This is an extraordinarily well written book about evolution and specifically about the finches of the Galapagos. There is a lot of information about the beaks of the finch but I was never bored. While not written like a text book, it has examples of experiments related to natural selection and other aspects of Darwin's ideas that would be valuable to students, travelers to the Galapagos, and people interested in biology.

After reading the Beak of the Finch I cringe every time I hear about the slow pace of evolution. Beautifully written, giving insights into the character of the researchers who have painstakingly unveiled the wonders of life to the masses. Now when I look outside I can't fail to see a new landscape painted in hues of survival and change. A landscape which man has also trod. A delight!

We actually use this book as supplementary material in an Evolutionary Biology class for which I am a teaching assistant, so I've had the occasion to read it several times. It is amazingly well-written and illustrates some subtle and difficult topics with a rarely-seen/read elegance. I would recommend this to any student of biology, formal or otherwise.

Weiner, Jonathan. (1994.2014). The beak of the finch. A story of evolution in our time. New York: Vintage Books. Pulitzer Prize winner. This is a fascinating book, which promises more than it delivers. The author reviews the work of scientists Grant on one island of the Galapogos Islands where for over 20 years they studied finches. Daphne Major – A small island directly north of Santa Cruz and directly west of Baltra, this very inaccessible island appears, though unnamed, on Ambrose Cowley's 1684 chart. It is important as the location of multidecade finch population studies by Peter and Rosemary Grant.The claim is that they saw evolution in process, but this claim is too strong for many reasons. The author is careful to quality his claims with “almost,” because it is not clear that we are seeing more than variation within a species. This is an unusual book on evolution because, in order to credit the Grants, it admits (what most evolutionists will not), that, supposedly, at least until the Grants, there had been no actual proof of evolution. Rather it was a dogma, what “must” be, not something proven or observed. Evolution, if it happened, occurred too slowly to be observed. Careful reading also shows that finches, birds, would on occasion fly from island to island: therefore the island was not “isolated” which the theory requires. If the island is not isolated, the mechanisms of Darwin cannot work. Birds fly, turtles swim, plants can float or be carried, iguanas swim, and so on. The process which brought life to the islands has not stopped. I have read about the Galapagos since I was a boy: Darwin’s Voyages of the Beagle, Melville’s Las Encantadas, the Sierra Club book, and I have friends who have visited there. The book is splendid as description, but flawed in its acceptance or assertion that the Grants' study proves evolution by watching it at work.

This book is a well written and enjoyable text that makes the science of evolution understandable to everyone. The dedication of Peter and Rosemary Grant are inspiring. This book opened my eyes in many ways, including how fast dramatic changes take place. A must-read!!!

This book was very good in showing how natural selection takes place. It was a very informative novel, and it gives the reader a very good understanding of evolution. However the book was very repetitive and the chapters did now flow well together.

This is a fabulous book, exciting, entertaining, and educational, all at once. Beautifully illustrates and explains what is probably the most important theory in biology, and simultaneously shows how science is actually done. I enjoyed this very much.

This book is not for people that are not interested in evolution. There is very little dialogue, where as the plotline may decieve you that it is a "story". Reading this book is equivalent to reading out of the enviornmental sciene textbook. It does provide insight to evolution, and you will come out of it with more knowledge than you started with on evolution. "The Beak of the Finch" had an extremely choppy plot. It waould constatly jump from a present day storyline back to Darwin and his experiences without much notice. I would only recommend this book to individulas passionate about exolution, because that is all one would get out of it.

Weiner, Jonathan. (1994.2014). The beak of the finch. A story of evolution in our time. New York: Vintage Books. Pulitzer Prize winner. This is a fascinating book, which promises more than it delivers. The author reviews the work of scientists Grant on one island of the Galapogos Islands where for over 20 years they studied finches. Daphne Major – A small island directly north of Santa Cruz and directly west of Baltra, this very inaccessible island appears, though unnamed, on Ambrose Cowley's 1684 chart. It is important as the location of multidecade finch population studies by Peter and Rosemary Grant.The claim is that they saw evolution in process, but this claim is too strong for many reasons. The author is careful to quality his claims with “almost,” because it is not clear that we are seeing more than variation within a species. This is an unusual book on evolution because, in order to credit the Grants, it admits (what most evolutionists will not), that, supposedly, at least until the Grants, there had been no actual proof of evolution. Rather it was a dogma, what “must” be, not something proven or observed. Evolution, if it happened, occurred too slowly to be observed. Careful reading also shows that finches, birds, would on occasion fly from island to island: therefore the island was not “isolated” which the theory requires. If the island is not isolated, the mechanisms of Darwin cannot work. Birds fly, turtles swim, plants can float or be carried, iguanas swim, and so on. The process which brought life to the islands has not stopped. I have read about the Galapagos since I was a boy: Darwin’s Voyages of the Beagle, Melville’s Las Encantadas, the Sierra Club book, and I have friends who have visited there. The book is splendid as description, but flawed in its acceptance or assertion that the Grants' study proves evolution by watching it at work.

This book is a well written and enjoyable text that makes the science of evolution understandable to everyone. The dedication of Peter and Rosemary Grant are inspiring. This book opened my eyes in many ways, including how fast dramatic changes take place. A must-read!!!

This book was very good in showing how natural selection takes place. It was a very informative novel, and it gives the reader a very good understanding of evolution. However the book was very repetitive and the chapters did now flow well together.

This is a fabulous book, exciting, entertaining, and educational, all at once. Beautifully illustrates and explains what is probably the most important theory in biology, and simultaneously shows how science is actually done. I enjoyed this very much.

This book is not for people that are not interested in evolution. There is very little dialogue, where as the plotline may decieve you that it is a "story". Reading this book is equivalent to reading out of the enviornmental sciene textbook. It does provide insight to evolution, and you will come out of it with more knowledge than you started with on evolution. "The Beak of the Finch" had an extremely choppy plot. It waould constatly jump from a present day storyline back to Darwin and his experiences without much notice. I would only recommend this book to individulas passionate about exolution, because that is all one would get out of it.

This book is about 2 subject areas, really. First, field biology, population genetics and research on birds in the Galapagos Islands.

The author gives an in-depth look into research done by two biologists named the Grants and their graduate students over many years in the Galapagos islands. He interviews, follows and discusses the Grants. He also explains a lot of their work and what it means in a general ecological sense. For example, lots of this book concerns measuring bird's beaks and how they change over time as conditions also change over time.

This part of the book may lose the average reader and page after page of bird beak information may not thrill everyone. If this kind of stuff isn't your cup of tea, then give this book a pass. I, personally, found the great detail fascinating and necessary to really get at what the Grants work is all about.

From a literary point of view, there is only so much you can do with bird beaks and that Weiner makes this reading as rewarding and interesting as he does is commendable.

From a scientific point-of-view the Grant's work is observational and their work is limited by these constraints; That is, their work is not really experimental. A good null hypothesis comparing data needs to have some single factor manipulated in a controlled way to yield the best data. Now I know you can't really do that in a natural ecosystem, doing something like removing all the seeds of a certain type and see if the beak changes in the predicted manner. But you can do this on a small scale in the laboratory and the Grants have not done this. This lack is why their work, although painstaking and excellent, is not that earthshaking. Their research is usually pigeon-holed in a little niche and not something that makes its way into the average college ecology text.

The author does a creditable job for a layman in describing field research and ecological concepts. Ideas like competition, predation, selection, gene pools and the like are really best described using complex mathematics involving the calculus, matrices, and statistical models, so being able to understand what the heck the Grants are getting at is a coup for the author.

The second subject area is gradually included in the book and then the book shifts character and ends with an unscientific defense of something vaguely referred to as evolution.(Thus, the title "A story of evolution in our time") Weiner mixes up several concepts and includes them all under a charged word that means different things to different people, as you can see from the reviews already here.

This book does a great job in describing field work and specific observations regarding selection in response to pressures like change in rainfall. It does not do a good job supporting evolution- In part, because the author never adequately defines what he means when he says the word "evolution". Do the data show that bird beaks change over time? Yes. Do they demonstrate what drives this change? Only in part, because correlation is not the same as causality.

Then you come to the concept of evolution. I take it that Weiner means everything from adaptation and organic evolution theories stating that all life started from changes in the primordial soup to atheism. These are not at all the same topic and Weiner fails completely to explain this. Since the reader never knows what exactly Weiner is defending, the last part of the book where some of the scientists involved dis others due to religion or being a member of some religious group that, it is implied, feels differently is head-scratchingly vague and out of place.

The bird's beaks grow, shrink, thicken and thin back and forth and in the end there is really no major change. So do the data prove "evolution"? No, they do not. So if you're looking for a defense of your zealously held political beliefs regarding "evolution" you should read elsewhere. And if you read the bibliography and are outraged that there are no articles "proving" creationism to balance the other articles, you need to realize that this is really not the purpose of this book. Unfortunately, the author never realized this and thus the imprecise title that leads you away from what this book really should be.

Overall, this is an excellent layman's book on biology and some basic concepts like natural selection and competition. It also is excellent in portraying field biology and those who work in the field. But it fails completely to explain what "evolution in our time" means and implies. Three stars.

I was assigned to read this book for an Environmental class. The book was very informative, but also dry and slow. Some of the factual information was interseting, but for the most part i did not enjoy it, beacuse it seemed like a continual listing of facts on evolution.

A cripplingly tedious account of cripplingly tedious field work that tends to confirm things that you thought were totally obvious. For most people with a high school education, natural selection, at the level depicted in the book, is pure common sense. Environmental pressures favor the survival/fecundity of those certain phenotypes that then tend to displace others. Sexual preference, adaptive behaviors, and cross-breeding affect this in several ways and, if the pressures are extreme, the changes can come fast. The selective process can move in many directions and can recede altogether with the arrival and departure of such pressures. You can write the whole substance of it on the back of an index card. However, the book invites you experience every trial and tribulation of the marooned finches and of the pathetic scientists who waste their lives watching and measuring them. Predictable things happen in predictable ways. You are along for the ride. You could have read something else, but the reviews were so good you convince yourself that the book just HAS to get better soon. There are efforts made to spice up the narrative--the scientists heroically tell droll jokes in the face of unimaginable boredom, the finches are induced to enjoy inter-species necrophiliatic intercourse with decapitated bird cadavers--but no indulgence in humor or kinky sexcapades can make the finches very interesting.

The book gradually runs natural selection down and pounds it relentlessly into the guano-encrusted tuff of Daphne Major. However, mere natural selection does not alone give you "evolution." The book only dabbles in the critical issue of speciation. It always refers to phenotypically distinct finch groups that tend not to interbreed as "species," but, amazingly, the book never attempts a formal definition of "species" and does little more than offer conversations amongst the forlorn scientists that the finch varieties indeed really just have to be separate species despite noisome interbreeding and whatnot. This could have been the interesting part--the critical part--where durable evolutionary divergence happens. Leave it to the finches to start interbreeding and melting back toward a single type.

The book actually comes alive when it ditches the finches in favor of something (anything) else. Sadly, this happens in the final quarter, when you are also told of other things you already knew from high school and a few thing you might not have known (a real treat) and this happens at an intelligent pace (another treat). Then, to tie up the book, the author indulges in some big picture/philosophical treatments that are too repetitive and uneven to be very satisfying.

Don't get me wrong, the book is very "well-written" in a mechanical sense. Truly artful biblical references and adroit and soothing language serve to dull the reader's suffering as the pages slowly go by. Even so, I have never hated the experience of a non-fiction work as much as this. I feel stupid for having finished it. I now hate "Darwin's finches" and their vicissitudinous, environmentally selected beaks. What a waste of my time. I find myself hoping they soon go extinct and that the circumstances and causes of their extinction pass unobserved and unknowable.

So, why do people like this tome?

(1) Some readers may be surprised to discover what natural selection is, having neither any education nor imagination that would have previously acquainted them with the idea.

(2) The book strives to support the theory of evolution, which many people reject for irrational or unscientific reasons. Many readers need to be associated with the smart crowd who like evolution and "liking" this book reaffirms their participation in that smart group and further assures them they are totally unlike the other group, who instead intensely dislike the book for analogous reasons.

(3) They are, or are related to, one of the scientists whose tragic sacrifice on the altar of pointless empiricism is depicted in this heart-wrenching monument to wasted lives.

--Recommended for scientifically inclined boys of middling intellect, aged 12 to 16 years.

After discussing evolution with a friend, she handed me this book to show me that evolution is indeed an observable fact. She told me that this book demonstrated "evolution in action." This excited me, so I read this book hoping to find some convincing evidence for evolution.

Jonathan Weiner did a remarkable job of recording the Grant's work into an extremely readable book, and I hope that what I'm about to say doesn't detract from the dedicated fieldwork of the Grants, whose incredibly detailed measurements of thousands of birds over a 20-year period on the small island of Daphne Major are a major contribution to the study of population dynamics and ecology.

It is very unfortunate that neither Weiner or the Grants couldn't understand the simple act that, while natural selection is a necessary aspect of the evolution model, demonstrating it does not in and of itself demonstrate evolution(if by evolution you mean single cell creatures becoming today's biosphere). What I mean is that natural selection does not produce NEW GENETIC INFORMATION. For bacteria-to-man evolution to work, there MUST be an increase in new genetic information. Neither Weiner nor the Grants demonstrated one example of an increase in new genetic information. Rather, they demonstrated many examples of a LOSS of information, which is what natural selection does.

Another unfortunate aspect of this book were the serious misrepresentations of creationists. Both the Grants and Weiner seemed to think that any inheritable change in a population is a deathblow to creationists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Creationists have no problem with the concept of "change through time." What we have a problem with is "change with the increase of NEW GENETIC INFORMATION." Throughout the book, Wiener creates these straw men, and many more. I could go on all day on how Wiener seriously misrepresented creationists, but I would rather end this review on a good note.

To the creationist, this book greatly confirms the biblical account of creation, that God created plants and animals according to their kind(not species), and that there are genetic limits to these kinds. For me, natural selection is powerful evidence for an intelligent designer, that God programmed each kind of animal with the genetic information to adapt to many different environments.

The Beak of the Finch, while being very informative for scientific reasons, did not flow very well as a story. The story starts out as an adventure with the Grant's in the Galapagos Islands. The impression was that it was to be a novel which tells a story, while in reality it was full of boring information about the finch. I give the book two stars for the experiments and evolution theories, but as a story it was not flowing. Overall, I did not enjoy the novel due to the falsehood of the story.

Let's agree on one thing: Evolution proposes that one species originates from another species as it goes through genetic changes in response to environmental changes."The Beak of the Finch" claims to show this in real life by relying on observations of moths, fish, bacteria, and especially the finches of the Galapagos Islands. Each example, however, shows that the species in the long run remain the same or nearly so. The finch study, which focused on beak size, showed that the beak size of finches remained the same after 25 years, though there were some population cycles paralelling El Nino cycles. The conclusion? "Fortis [the finch] has done a lot of evolving just to stay in place!" (p. 192, hardcover) They change without changing? Right! Creationists should love this book. If all evolutionary theory sounds this illogical, Darwin doesn't stand a chance. At another point the book tells us that after Newton's Principia religion became irrelevant--if that is so, why did Newton himself devote most of his life after writing Principia to studies of theology? Bogus logic + bogus history = bogus thesis.

"Steve Weinberg [...] gave me a useful piece of advice," recalls Anthony Zee. Weinberg told him: "the lay reader only want[s] to have the illusion of understanding and to catch a few buzz words to throw around at cocktail parties."

Quoting one writer to slam another may be a bit shabby of me. But Zee's anecdote explains the basic reason I didn't like this book. As Weinberg put it, this book does nothing more than dress up some buzzwords so you'll be ready to take them out on the town. The discovery and documentation of evolution by natural selection is one of the greatest achievements of the modern era, but this book's attempt to portray it fell flat. I am glad this book has gotten people excited about evolution and its many aspects, from rapid speciation to antibiotic resistance. I do not contend that this book should never be read. But when I read it, I had an undeniable and strong negative response, practically a bodily revulsion. I don't even know, if I re-read the book today, if I would react so negatively; but although I wouldn't extrapolate my personal reaction to every potential reader, I think my reaction was a valid one, and so I will explain it below.

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Maybe I should explain how I came to read and disdain this book. After all, if it repels me, why did I dig into it at all?

I became acquainted with this book in an upper-level college class on evolution. Over the course of the semester, we read the book; once every two weeks we suspended the lecture, turned our desks into a circle, and discussed a portion of the book for an hour. The students were all juniors and seniors majoring in biology. But although our conversations would sometimes be exciting and incisive, you might have been surprised to see a roomful of students be set free from a lecture only to remain mostly dour and lethargic. The reason was simple: this book put us off intelligent conversation like sour milk puts you off cereal.

The book had originally been included in the course curriculum to supplement our textbook. The thinking, it seems, was that the textbook and lectures could give us the big, dry glut of information that is undergraduate education -- in this case, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, adaptive landscapes, random walks, etc. -- and that Weiner's book could provide other useful info. For one thing, this book provides case studies of actual organisms with actual bodyparts; for another thing, this book portrays the life of a research scientist, showing how science actually gets done; and finally, this book gives an account of where the idea of evolution by natural selection comes from, going back to Darwin.

The problem was that the book did most of these things only marginally, and in the process garbled the scientific substance so badly that none of the meager redeeming qualities could shine through. A consensus quickly formed among the class that the book was not worth reading. The following year it was dropped from the course, and the professor found much greater success having the class read the primary literature of the people discussed in the book (Darwin, Schluter, and the Grants). Looking back, I recognize that much of my dissatisfaction with this book results from my perspective as a reader. I was not an "educated layperson"; and, as I was in the thick of my coursework, I reflexively approached the book with a critical eye rather than letting its disjointed half-stories wash over me. This book is best enjoyed as you enjoy the storytelling of a small child -- you don't expect each word to be appropriate or the events to be provided in order, but you can enjoy the gusto nonetheless. I offer this review fully aware that many people have enjoyed this book, and I can only explain, for the sake of potential readers, that from my perspective the book wasn't worth reading.

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I should be more specific about what I didn't enjoy in the book.

One major complaint is that the presentation is disjointed and poorly organized. As you read, you move forward and backward in time, from Darwin at one point in his life to the Grants at another, to Darwin at some other time and then again to something else about the Grants, maybe with a pause to consider sticklebacks or apples. I have to say, Weiner handles it all very clearly -- you never lose track of what time and place you are reading about at the moment. But Weiner doesn't handle it with any rhyme or reason. He simply seems to be following a common practice in popular nonfiction of feeding the audience snippets and then changing the subject so we never get bored. Sometimes this style can even work very well, but there was no natural parallelism between his parallel stories, and I got bored *faster* because every time a story in the book got to where I wanted to enjoy its conclusion, Weiner jumped to another time and place.

The book is also painfully repetitive. In fact, I like to play a simple game with this book: open to a random page, and (even though the pages aren't very big) you should be able to find a repetition on the page. I'm not saying literally every page repeats itself, but I will also say that I haven't lost this game yet, even a single time. Let's play now... At the bottom of page 57, Weiner tells us 'Boag says ... "That's why we all want to work there. Not because it's nice. Because it's simple.' Apparently it was also worthwhile to explain, at the top of 58, that '"No one anywhere has duplicated the kind of fieldwork we did in the Galapagos -- because it was so simple," Boag says.' Check out the quote, if you suspect it is out of context. The quotations, although each is fine and indeed quite useful, are simply redundant in each other's company. Or consider from page 255 how Weiner notes that "Of the four types of adaptations, the four survival strategies, this is the hardest for evolution to bring off..." It's like he writes with a stutter, and although I mean no offense to stutterers I find it an off-putting affectation when it pervades Weiner's prose. The repetition creates the appearance that the author is inflating the page count, talking down to us, or both. I won't quote the book ad nauseum here, but I invite you to play the game. I have even found consecutive *paragraphs* that are redundant!

To top it all, the book is often scientifically incorrect. Consider, for example, Weiner's account (on page 194) of what happened when a fruit fly species expanded its range from the Australian tropics into temperate land farther south: "In terms of the adaptive landscape, [the fly species] was hopping from peak to peak, and as it got farther from the rain forest, each peak was colder and snowier than the one before. Actually the journey was harder on the flies than that, both colder and hotter, since [the fly's] migration from the tropics to the temperate zone exposed it to seasonal swings of temperature that were more and more extreme in both directions." In two sentences, Weiner uses technical buzzwords to make us feel smart, but then totally misapplies the adaptive landscape concept, and finally ends up emphasizing his point by way of rendering his own lame metaphor pointless. As with the examples of repetition, I could go on and on dredging up examples, but I won't. I will briefly suggest looking at how Weinberg presents the Grants' use of computer models. He has them building predictive models from and testing the predictions against a single data set. Yeah. Some simplification is necessary, even good, even when the target audience is highly technical. But too often this book presents material in such a warped, compressed manner as to be simply wrong. Let me be clear, since the topic is volatile, in specifying that I do not disagree with the theory of evolution by natural selection. Weiner, however, misrepresents this theory.

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So what's the bottom line? The bottom line is that I read a book that has aroused great enthusiasm, but, for the reasons I have explained, I felt overwhelmingly negative toward the book.

I should note that there is one thing this book does well. It makes the life and work of contemporary scientists palpable and human. I have little doubt that this is a major reason the book has been so successful. Reading this book, you get a distinct sense of the tedium of fieldwork, the convenience of digitized datasets, the comraderie among researchers, the patience and quirkiness of scientific insight, the creativity of experimental design, the dust and heat of desert islands, the gushing enthusiasm of researchers for how COOL their work is, the gradual and awkward groping of Charles Darwin toward his theory, ... the works. Considering all this, maybe it's no wonder Weiner didn't manage to squeeze in a very robust scientific account.

Indeed, setting aside Weiner's treatment of them, all the topics discussed in this book are supremely COOL! Darwin's intellectual journey is incredibly nuanced and well documented by primary documents, not to mention hugely groundbreaking. In and of itself, the Grants' (et al's) real-time study of finch evolution is impressive to scientist and layperson alike, and not just because of the speed of adaptive change they show. The Grants have gone so far as to show that the pressure of natural selection can destabilize species boundaries -- which is an unexpected extension of Darwin's own jumping-off point from which he formulated his theory.

There is a poetic quality to how the Grants' work has brought evolutionary biology's struggle with the species concept full circle. From sticklebacks to pesticide, the ancillary topics are all important too. But that is how I would describe the topics themselves, not the topics as they appear in this book. There's the rub: considering the wondrous subject matter, I anticipated wonder, but the book gave me a hash of half-stories and buzzwords. In spite of how much material there is to cover on evolution, the text seemed (as another reviewer put it) "not quite meaty enough alone to fill an entire book." The text was inflated with repetition and marred by misrepresentation. The book sounded like it was trying too hard to show its own importance rather than let the awesomeness of the material speak for itself. I felt like I had to work really hard to cut through Weiner's writing to actually tap into the coolness.

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Now, you might well say: "Well, what should I read instead of this? If you hate this much-loved book, surely you won't be satisfied with any book!"

One book on the life of scientists and how they produce new knowledge that I can recommend is The Seashell on the Mountaintop. It tells the story of how geology became a natural science. It was at this time that humans first peered into the vast well of deep time, seeing not only an ancient Earth but a changing Earth. This event, of course, set the stage for Darwin. For the layperson interested in evolution, I suggest Your Inner Fish and Why Evolution Is True. And, seriously, I would also recommend reading Darwin's original work. It's more accessible than you might think. For one thing, although it is in the style of a 19th-century British gentleman, it wasn't written THAT long ago, was it? People still read Jane Austen for pleasure, and she wrote 50 years before Darwin. More importantly, when Darwin wrote his book there was no genetics or evolutionary theory, so there was no technical jargon -- in effect, because there were no specialists, Darwin's own work was written for the educated layperson!

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(This review has been heavily edited for tone, but not content.) 2x

After discussing evolution with a friend, she handed me this book to show me that evolution is indeed an observable fact. She told me that this book demonstrated "evolution in action." This excited me, so I read this book hoping to find some convincing evidence for evolution.

Jonathan Weiner did a remarkable job of recording the Grant's work into an extremely readable book, and I hope that what I'm about to say doesn't detract from the dedicated fieldwork of the Grants, whose incredibly detailed measurements of thousands of birds over a 20-year period on the small island of Daphne Major are a major contribution to the study of population dynamics and ecology.

It is very unfortunate that neither Weiner or the Grants couldn't understand the simple act that, while natural selection is a necessary aspect of the evolution model, demonstrating it does not in and of itself demonstrate evolution(if by evolution you mean single cell creatures becoming today's biosphere). What I mean is that natural selection does not produce NEW GENETIC INFORMATION. For bacteria-to-man evolution to work, there MUST be an increase in new genetic information. Neither Weiner nor the Grants demonstrated one example of an increase in new genetic information. Rather, they demonstrated many examples of a LOSS of information, which is what natural selection does.

Another unfortunate aspect of this book were the serious misrepresentations of creationists. Both the Grants and Weiner seemed to think that any inheritable change in a population is a deathblow to creationists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Creationists have no problem with the concept of "change through time." What we have a problem with is "change with the increase of NEW GENETIC INFORMATION." Throughout the book, Wiener creates these straw men, and many more. I could go on all day on how Wiener seriously misrepresented creationists, but I would rather end this review on a good note.

To the creationist, this book greatly confirms the biblical account of creation, that God created plants and animals according to their kind(not species), and that there are genetic limits to these kinds. For me, natural selection is powerful evidence for an intelligent designer, that God programmed each kind of animal with the genetic information to adapt to many different environments.