Into the Jungle: Great Adventures in the Search for Evolution

Each chapter of this book is an independent story about some person who made important discoveries that contributed to our understanding of evolution. The list includes Darwin and Wallace (of course), and less-known individuals such as Roy Chapman Andrews who was the model of Indiana Jones. Each chapter is fairly short, about 20 pages on average, and do not have to be read in sequence, so you can just open the book to a random page and start reading. Excellent book to have when you need something that can be read in a relatively short time. The focus of each chapter is more on the person than his/her science so if you want a deeper understanding of evolutionary science, you should read the other books by the same author, namely The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution and Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo. If you are not particularly interested in people, then you will probably find this book boring.

Here's the weird thing about this book: at first it's clearly aimed at, like, ninth-graders; he's practically writing in Simple English for the first few chapters. It's a little annoying because I'm all grown up and stuff but it's okay. But the thing is by the end, he's done a total 180 and suddenly I have no idea what he's talking about. Here's a random sentence from the second-to-last chapter: "In 1957, it was finally determined that HbS differed from HbA at just one amino acid, a valine in place of glutamic acid." I don't know what a valine is and he's not going to tell me. So I dunno, man, first it's too easy and then it's too hard. Four stars, though, because the middle part is just right.

The book "Into the Jungle" by Sean Carroll is simply an absolute delight to read. It brings excitement, life and humanity back to the scientific endeavors that led to our appreciation of the importance of evolution. Carroll makes clear that these were truly exciting adventures undertaken by vibrant and sometimes quirky characters whose colorful lives bring the subject truly to life. Each chapter focuses on the adventures of a different individual - Darwin in the first (of course), followed by Wallace, Bates, Dubois with his Java man, Chapman and his amazing excursion for fossils to China, the Alvarezes and the asteroid impact theory of extinction, Courtenay-Latimer & Smith of coelacanth fame, Tony Allison & the safari to examine the sickle-cell gene story, and last, DeVries and others associated with the ice fish phenomenon. And adventures they have indeed. The stories are told in a delightfully vivid prose that makes the individuals and the times they lived in really come alive. All this while still having each chapter point out the scientific impact of each of these unique adventures. At the end of each chapter are 3-5 questions that would require a few sentences to answer. This has made it simply ideal as an adjunct to a course in Introductory Biology. Students in our Honors Program often look for something to supplement their course work during the semester; I point them to this easy to read text and ask them to read the book and hand in a copy of the answers to the questions for each chapter each week and discuss briefly what they have read. The book is a light an enjoyable read - I simply couldn't put it down. Don't expect extremely detailed and dry analyses of evolutionary theory and data. Rather, expect an adventure! Robert Paul Malchow, Ph.D.