John Maynard Smith (1920–2004)

Don't be fooled by the small size of this book; it is not a book for a casual reader. If you are not familiar with evolutionary genetics, you may find the amount of jargon offputting. Do you know what cytoplasmic streaming is? Then you will find it readable. The author never bothers to define any terms, but sprinkles them freely throughout his work. This is okay if you are aiming a book at a scientific audience, but this is aimed at a general audience, or at least the author thinks it is. In show more addition, it probably isn't the best work to choose, since it was written nearly 20 years ago, and EvoDevo has moved along a lot since that time. The final chapter was absolutely out of the realm of science, as he speculated that your political views determined which view of evolutionary development you took; as he became more conservative, his views moved toward that of a reductionist. There may be some truth to that, but I think there are way to many people on the side of genetic control for a group of specialists mostly dominated by political liberals for this to be the case. In any case, it was strictly anecdotal, and should have been left out of the book, since it appeared it might have been included for the purpose of making a "point" about people who were politically out of tune with him. This is not the place for that, and without more solid eidence than, oh, I know some people, and this is my own views, this should not have been included at all. Overall, a bit of a disappointment, but then, it is quite out of date, so maybe I shouldn't have expected much. show less

When you read a books of previously published essays you have to expect repetition, and lack of continuity. Repitition of content is one thing. Smith seems to have reused whole paragraphs and groups of paragraphs in different essays. At least once I checked that I didn't have a bad copy with the same pages bound in twice.

You also expect the editors to give you at least a few hints as to the context of the essays, if that is important to reading them. Several of these essays are book reviews, show more but the book reviewed is not named in the chapter, just in the bibliographic information at the back of the book. The beginning of the first chapter that is a book review beginns with 'This book...' The book reviewed, that is, NOT obvious in this context.

In the end, I think I learned something from reading this, but I'm not eager to read another book by him, unless there is some indication that it has been better edited before publishing. show less

Some interesting insights, neatly put. For example, "Evolution tends to adapt the nature of animals and plants to their environments. In history, man has adapted his environment to his nature". Contrast this with the Darwin-centric view of (for example) Dawkins. He also makes the point that humans have for a considerable time, sought (and in many cases succeeded, even without today's technologies), to 'direct the evolution of their domestic animals and plants'.

An wide-ranging and entertaining introduction to several current issues in evolutionary theory.