Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995) is the seventh volume of collected essays by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The essays were culled from his monthly column "The View of Life" in Natural History magazine, to which Gould contributed for 27 years. The book deals, in typically discursive fashion, with themes familiar to Gould's writing: evolution and its teaching, science biography, probabilities and common sense.

Contents

• Come Seven
  1. Heaven and Earth
     1. Happy Thoughts on a Sunny Day in New York City

     2. Dousing Diminutive Dennis's Debate (or DDDD = 2000)

     3. The Celestial Mechanic and the Earthly Naturalist

     4. The Late Birth of a Flat Earth

     5. Literature and Science
        5. The Monster's Human Nature

        6. The Tooth and Claw Centennial

        7. Sweetness and Light

        8. Origin, Stability, and Extinction
           

           Origin

           8. In the Mind of the Beholder

           9. Of Tongue Worms, Velvet Worms, and Water Bears
              

              Stability

              10. Cordelia's Dilemma

              11. Lucy on the Earth in Stasis

                  Extinction

                  12. Dinosaur in a Haystack

                  13. Jove's Thunderbolts

                  14. Writing about Snails
                      14. Poe's Greatest Hit

                      15. The Invisible Woman

                      16. Left Snails and Right Minds

                      17. The Glory of Museums
                          17. Dinomania

                          18. Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!

                          19. Evolution by Walking

                          20. The Razumovsky Duet

                          21. Four Antelopes of the Apocalypse

                          22. Disparate Faces of Eugenics
                              22. Does the Stoneless Plum Instruct the Thinking Reed?

                              23. The Smoking Gun of Eugenics

                              24. The Most Unkindest Cut of All

                              25. Evolutionary Theory, Evolutionary Stories
                                  

                                  Theory

                                  25. Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?

                                  26. A Humongous Fungus Among Us

                                  27. Speaking of Snails and Scales

                                      Stories

                                      28. Hooking Leviathan by Its Past

                                      29. A Special Fondness for Beetles

                                      30. If Kings Can Be Hermits, Then We Are All Monkeys' Uncles

                                      31. Magnolias from Moscow

                                      32. Linnaeus and Darwin's Grandfather
                                          32. The First Unmasking of Nature

                                          33. Ordering Nature by Budding and Full-Breasted Sexuality

                                          34. Four Metaphors in Three Generations

                                          35. Bibliography

                                          36. Index

From Publishers Weekly

Reviews

• Snails, Frankenstein and King Lear's Daughter - by Philip Lopate, The New York Times
• Two Cultures - by Howard A. Doughty, Innovation Journal
• Book review - by Kathryn Denning
• Book review - by Danny Yee