Product Description

Here is bestselling scientist Stephen Jay Gould’s tenth and final collection based on his remarkable series for Natural History magazine—exactly 300 consecutive essays, with never a month missed, published from 1974 to 2001. Both an intellectually thrilling journey into the nature of scientific discovery and the most personal book he has ever published, I Have Landed marks the end of a significant chapter in the career of one of the most acclaimed and widely read scientists of our time.

Gould writes about the themes that have defined his career, which his readers have come to expect and celebrate, casting new light upon them and conveying the ideas that science professionals exchange among themselves (minus the technical jargon). Here, of course, is Charles Darwin, from his centrality to any sound scientific education to little-known facts about his life. Gould touches on subjects as far-reaching and disparate as feathered dinosaurs, the scourge of syphilis and the frustration of the man who identified it, and Freud’s “evolutionary fantasy.” He writes brilliantly of Nabokov’s delicately crafted drawings of butterflies and the true meaning of biological diversity. And in the poignant title essay, he details his grandfather’s journey from Hungary to America, where he arrived on September 11, 1901. It is from his grandfather’s journal entry of that day, stating simply “I have landed,” that the book’s title was drawn. This landing occurred 100 years to the day before our greatest recent tragedy, also explored, but with optimism, in the concluding section of the book.

Presented in eight parts, I Have Landed begins with a remembrance of a moment of wonder from childhood. In Part II, Gould explains that humanistic disciplines are not antithetical to theoretical or applied sciences. Rather, they often share a commonality of method and motivation, with great potential to enhance the achievements of each other, an assertion perfectly supported by essays on such notables as Nabokov and Frederic Church.

Part III contains what no Gould collection would be complete without: his always compelling “mini intellectual biographies,” which render each subject and his work deserving of reevaluation and renewed significance. In this collection of figures compelling and strange, Gould exercises one of his greatest strengths, the ability to reveal a significant scientific concept through a finely crafted and sympathetic portrait of the person behind the science. Turning his pen to three key figures—Sigmund Freud, Isabelle Duncan, and E. Ray Lankester, the latter an unlikely attendee of the funeral of Karl Marx—he highlights the effect of the Darwinian revolution and its resonance on their lives and work.

Part IV encourages the reader—through what Gould calls “intellectual paleontology”—to consider scientific theories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in a new light and to recognize the limitations our own place in history may impose on our understanding of those ideas. Part V explores the op-ed genre and includes two essays with differing linguistic formats, which address the continual tug-of-war between the study of evolution and creationism.

In subsequent essays, in true Gould fashion, we are treated to moments of good humor, especially when he leads us to topics that bring him obvious delight, such as Dorothy Sayers novels and his enduring love of baseball and all its dramas. There is an ardent admiration of the topsy-turvy world of Gilbert and Sullivan (wonderfully demonstrated in the jacket illustration), who are not above inclusion in all things evolutionary.

This is truly Gould’s most personal work to date. How fitting that this final collection should be his most revealing and, in content, the one that reflects most clearly the complexity, breadth of knowledge, and optimism that characterize Gould himself. I Have Landed succeeds in reinforcing Gould’s underlying and constant theme from the series’ commencement thirty years ago—the study of our own scientific, intellectual, and emotional evolution—bringing reader and author alike to what can only be described as a brilliantly written and very natural conclusion.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #463502 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-22
• Released on: 2003-04-22
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.20" h x .90" w x 6.08" l, .89 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Gould, whose name has become synonymous with evolutionary biology, once again collects 31 essays from his Natural History column. Gould completed his 300th column for the magazine on the doubly significant 2001 millennium and centennial of his family's arrival at Ellis Island (thus the title, borrowed from his grandfather's journal entry that day). Several of these essays explore the ambiguous relations of art, science and the natural world. Gould compels readers to see the natural world outside the frame of the familiar, to seek the quirky outside the canonical, to challenge our assumptions. This is evident when he gleefully reports on the Human Genome Project, showing our genetic stuff to be only twice what a roundworm needs "to manufacture its utter, if elegant, outward simplicity." His essays affirm his belief in the power of science to overcome past error, and as always, he is intolerant of the misapplication as well as the rejection of science, dismissing left- and right-wing claims about Darwin as brusquely as he does the anti-evolutionist Kansas Board of Education, whose yellow brick road "can only spiral inward toward restriction and ignorance." Gould is at the peak of his abilities in this latest menagerie of wonders.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This is the tenth and final anthology of Gould's essays from Natural History magazine. Through the writings in this series, Gould has influenced public opinion on science in numerous ways that other scientists, who eschew the essay as a vehicle for technical communication, cannot even approach. As in all of the volumes, Gould writes on Darwinism, evolutionary theory, the history of science, and the joys of doing scientific research. Somewhat more in this volume than in the others, he expresses his personal thoughts and experiences, such as in the titular essay and in the concluding short piece, "September 11, 2001." Some critics wince at his often turgid prose and argue that he depicts his opinions as facts, but this volume, which coincides with the publication of his magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, deserves to be celebrated as a career accomplishment. Gould's many fans and foes alike should congratulate him for these achievements and also for having the grace to know when to move on. This anthology belongs in all public and academic libraries. Gregg Sapp, Science Lib., SUNY at Albany
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gould, a self-described "naturalist by profession and a humanist at heart," has written some of the most edifying and masterful essays of our times. Valuing literary finesse and moral clarity as much as scientific and historical precision, and combining wit with an enduring sense of mission, Gould has written 300 sequential essays for Natural History magazine and parlayed them into 10 exemplary collections over the course of 25 demanding years. In this particularly compelling, far-ranging, and profoundly moving volume, Gould expresses his ongoing wonder over "the continuity of etz chayim, the tree of earthly life" and parses "the unity of creativity" that connects science and art. He develops the first theme on many fronts as he continues his noble effort to educate the public on the finer points of evolution, discussing birds and dinosaurs, so-called native plants, and the startling discovery of lateral gene transfer among bacterial species. Gould explores the nexus of art and science in enlightening discussions of Nabokov's "passion for accuracy" in both his literary and lepidopterogical endeavors, and the influence of the great scientist Alexander von Humboldt on the superb landscape painter Frederic Church. Because this volume is the last in this extraordinary series, Gould intended to make it his most personal by celebrating the centenary of his family's arrival in the U.S. To that end, he describes his most treasured book, an 1892 edition of Studies in English Grammar purchased by his then young Hungarian immigrant grandfather shortly after he arrived in New York, who inscribed the title page, "I have landed. Sept. 11th 1901." A joyful occasion was rendered catastrophic, yet, in the wake of September 11, 2001, Gould wrote four radiantly redemptive essays, in which he declares, "Every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by ten thousand acts of kindness." Surely Gould's eloquence and intellectual generosity are among them. Donna Seaman
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