For more than twenty-five years, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a column called 'The View of Life' for Natural History magazine. More than twenty entries from that column comprise this collection, which includes such essays as 'Boyle's Law and Darwin's Details,' 'Brotherhood by Inversion (or, As the Worm Turns),' 'Darwin's American Soulmate,' 'The Diet of Worms and Defenestration of Prague,' 'The Dodo in the Caucus Race,' 'Reversing Established Orders,' 'A Seahorse for All Races,' 'The Upwardly Mobile Fossils of Leonardo's Living Earth,' and 'Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?'