Rating: 
Summary: Good - but irratating
Review: Interesting and thought provoking, but I got sick of the continual baseball references and the hints at how clever he himself is - it seems the only friend he admires that isn't overwhelmed by his own genius is his mate Ed who got a nobel prize. But a good read anyhow!
Rating:
Summary: Some very good points - if a bit strained philosophically
Review: It is sad that Dr. Gould was taken away so soon. He always made interesting points, offered some startling insights, and was generally fun - he was even acerbic in a fun way.He wrote this book for the general audience, of which I am a part. I cannot hope to challenge his or even approve of his professional points. I don't really have the training. But I can offer impressions. It seems to me that when he is talking about science he is very good and gave me quite a bit to think about. Honestly, he gave me some new views on distributions and natural selection that will stick with me. I found his sociological and philosophical conclusions drawn from these observations to be somewhat strained and overburdened his evidence a bit. He really doesn't address the concept of decadence much as it relates to the dying out of things. For example, baseball could very well be played better than ever and yet not be played as well as it could be because of secondary desires such as home runs instead of base hits. What fans want to see leads to a selection in a style of play that pleases them and brings in money. Then money is the point of the game and not pure excellence in play. Therefore, the best athletes of all time could be playing the game and yet their style of play would be less effective than it could be because of what the fans want to see. But wouldn't a style that led to more wins be adopted? Certainly, no one would adopt a losing strategy. But maybe the optimal difference is only slight but pleasing the fans brings in so much more money that it changes the way everyone plays the game. Football did this to make their game a passing game - which fans like more. Clearly, with the rules and styles all supporting the pass, no team can be based primarily on the run as they used to be. Anyway, the book has some very interesting points to make, it isn't a difficult read, and I think you will get some good food for thought. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Some very good points - if a bit strained philosophically
Review: It is sad that Dr. Gould was taken away so soon. He always made interesting points, offered some startling insights, and was generally fun - he was even acerbic in a fun way. He wrote this book for the general audience, of which I am a part. I cannot hope to challenge his or even approve of his professional points. I don't really have the training. But I can offer impressions. It seems to me that when he is talking about science he is very good and gave me quite a bit to think about. Honestly, he gave me some new views on distributions and natural selection that will stick with me. I found his sociological and philosophical conclusions drawn from these observations to be somewhat strained and overburdened his evidence a bit. He really doesn't address the concept of decadence much as it relates to the dying out of things. For example, baseball could very well be played better than ever and yet not be played as well as it could be because of secondary desires such as home runs instead of base hits. What fans want to see leads to a selection in a style of play that pleases them and brings in money. Then money is the point of the game and not pure excellence in play. Therefore, the best athletes of all time could be playing the game and yet their style of play would be less effective than it could be because of what the fans want to see. But wouldn't a style that led to more wins be adopted? Certainly, no one would adopt a losing strategy. But maybe the optimal difference is only slight but pleasing the fans brings in so much more money that it changes the way everyone plays the game. Football did this to make their game a passing game - which fans like more. Clearly, with the rules and styles all supporting the pass, no team can be based primarily on the run as they used to be. Anyway, the book has some very interesting points to make, it isn't a difficult read, and I think you will get some good food for thought. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Large ideas but prose is a little ponderous
Review: On the whole, I very much enjoyed this book as it presented me with some ideas with which I wasn't previously familiar. These ideas are fairly large and very interesting and thus I found reading this book ultimately very rewarding. The only real problem with the book is that SJG does tend to write a little ponderously and some of his sentences do tend to slow readers down. In addition, I agree with many of the other reviewers that the book was a little long. I am not terribly bothered by this because, as I said, there were many interesting ideas which a slower, longer presentation meant more time for me to absorb. Because the central theme of the book is that increasing complexity is not characteristic of evolution of life on earth, it goes without saying that people for whom the existence of evolution is open to question should not bother reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for Content & Substance, 4 for Style
Review: Professor Gould has made a powerful argument in his usually convincing manner. The book presents a strong case against the popular anthropocentric view of natural evolution. Gould offers an extension to Darwin's natural selection by giving learned opinions on statistical evidence (the disappearing of 0.400 batting average) and a philosophical amalgamation of logical deductions. The author's intelligence and knowledge shine through his articulate lather of collegiate vocabulary (some of which in Latin--that's the reason for the not-so-generous 4 stars.) Gould is an excellent science writter whose passion for his beloved field is self evident. I believe he too, as a human being, scholar and writer, is one of those rare points at the 'right wall' of extreme achievements. Three themes are particaularly noteworthy: variations (not complexity) breed excellence, natural selection implies no progress, humans are not the epitome of life in the universe but merely an actualization of an improbable chance in evolution. Some readers may appreciate his obvious exclusion of religious counterpoints; an argument, however, could be made that such otherwise inclusion of an diametrically opposing view would have shown academic well roundedness. The book is an intellectually entertaining work. If a reader is open to a paradigm shift, Gould is likely the author to do the shifting. His recent death is our national loss.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for Content & Substance, 4 for Style
Review: Professor Gould has made a powerful argument in his usually convincing manner. The book presents a strong case against the popular anthropocentric view of natural evolution. Gould offers an extension to Darwin's natural selection by giving learned opinions on statistical evidence (the disappearing of 0.400 batting average) and a philosophical amalgamation of logical deductions. The author's intelligence and knowledge shine through his articulate lather of collegiate vocabulary (some of which in Latin--that's the reason for the not-so-generous 4 stars.) Gould is an excellent science writter whose passion for his beloved field is self evident. I believe he too, as a human being, scholar and writer, is one of those rare points at the 'right wall' of extreme achievements. Three themes are particaularly noteworthy: variations (not complexity) breed excellence, natural selection implies no progress, humans are not the epitome of life in the universe but merely an actualization of an improbable chance in evolution. Some readers may appreciate his obvious exclusion of religious counterpoints; an argument, however, could be made that such otherwise inclusion of an diametrically opposing view would have shown academic well roundedness. The book is an intellectually entertaining work. If a reader is open to a paradigm shift, Gould is likely the author to do the shifting. His recent death is our national loss.
Rating: 
Summary: Should have been an essay
Review: Stephen Gould presents interesting and compeling arguments for an alternative view of evolution. The basic concept being that if you start out with the simpliest life form there is no way to go but up. He however had me convinced within the first 20 pages and filled the rest of the book going over ad infinitum the same points with a variety of similar statistical and logic arguments. I should have quit reading it but have nothing else new to read until my next Amazon shipment shows up this week
Rating:
Summary: Good but what is that baseball thing doing there?
Review: Stephen Jay Gould is one of those scientists just like Carl Sagan, Desmond Morris or Stephen Hawking who can write about their field of expertise in a way that is interesting, informative and original but still accessible for the lay person. As I am a mere curious about biology I always benefit from this approach. I had read other books from Gould that were essay collections and I was happy to find Full House that is a single subject book. To my surprise by reading the book I found out that he was talking about something that I really understand that is statistics. The center idea is that evolution doesn't follow a trend towards complexity. We see now more complex organisms than a few hundred million years ago simply because there's a lower limit for complexity but not an upper limit and speciation increases the variety of organisms. Therefore there's an apparent movement towards complexity. This can be described by simple statistics and much of the book is used to introduce some basic statistics concepts. The downside in my opinion is the lengthy example on baseball. I think this restricts the interest on the book mainly to United States' readers or maybe Cubans and Japanese. About one third of the book deals with statistics and baseball, too much for me. But in spite of the baseball thing it is still a great book Leonardo Alves November 2000
Rating:
Summary: Look for the italics
Review: The central idea of this book, that humans can misread the "progress" or "motion" of a system (baseball, evolution, etc.) by misinterpreting the statistics (lies, damn lies, etc.) is valid, but he goes too far. Both the length of the book and many of his conclusions go beyond what is necessary or prudent. Redundancy is high, so this is a skimmer, for sure. Read the charts, read the bits with italicized headings, and keep your wits about you. His slavish repetitiveness is as engrossing as a Teletubby (Full House! Full House!). With the same message over and over again, it's best to stick to the salient points and move on. Good idea, worth maybe 25-50 pages, not 230. This self-important book needs a liberal edit, and a change of tone. Right now it's a gleefully self-righteous and bloated essay which won't be heard outside the choir-box.
Rating:
Summary: No Duh Stephen!
Review: The hypothesis is pretty basic and the book takes a long time to get around to it. Not worth the read. He could have summarized all the good thinking in this book into a fairly short magazine article. In fact, let me summarize it for you and save the time. Evolution doesn't inherently lead to more complex organisms (like humans), scientists just focus on those organisms at the expense of simple ones (like bacteria). There, now you can read something else instead.
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