<-- This shows the picture on the back cover.

Gould's essays on evolution and adaptation discuss everything from current theories in the New Synthesis, to organisms that change sex when they change size, to the past's crackpot theories and shameful applications of science.

In the title essay, he explains why the smile of the flamingo is upside-down: the upper beak acts as a lower beak and vice versa. Examples in other essays include a child with one set of hips but two heads, named Ritta-Christina; the origin of mysterious fossil conodonts, whose mystery has now been solved; and unipolar, bipolar, and radial growth patterns of the Vendian organisms in the Ediacaran deposits.

He explains that religion does not prove nor disprove science: "Science is a procedure for testing and rejecting hypotheses, not a compendium of certain knowledge. Claims that can be proved incorrect lie within its domain. But theories that can not be tested in principle are not part of science. Science is doing; not clever cogitation; we reject Omphalos as useless, not wrong."

The sections and essays in this book are

Prologue
1. Zoonomia (and Exceptions)
- The Flamingo's Smile
- Only his Wings Remained
- Sex and Size
2. Theory and Perception
Two Admirable Creationists:
- Adam's Navel
- The Freezing of Noah
The Cloven Hoofprint of Theory:
- False Premise, Good Science
- For Want of a Metaphor
3. The Importance of Taxonomy
- Of Wasps and WASPs
- Opus 100
- Human Equality is a Contingent Fact of History
- The Rule of Five
4. Trends and Their Meaning
- Losing the Edge
- Postscript: Stike Three for Babe
- Death and Transfiguration
- Reducing Riddles
5. Politics and Progress
The Chain of Being:
- To Show an Ape
- Bound by the Great Chain
- The Hottentot Venus
Eugenics Past and Present:
- Carrie Buck's Daughter
- Singapore's Patrimony (and Matrimony)
6. Darwiniana
- Hannah West's Left Shoulder and the Origin of Natural Selection
- Darwin at Sea—and the Virtues of Port
- A Short Way to Corn
7. Life Here and Elsewhere
- Just in the Middle
- Mind and Supermind
- SETI and the Wisdom of Casey Stengel
8. Extinction and Continuity
- Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs
- Continuity
- The Cosmic Dance of Siva
Bibliography
Index

Books by Stephen Jay Gould:
- Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
- An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas
- Leonardo's Mountain of Clams & the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History
- The Mismeasure of Man
- Bully for Brontosaurus
- Ever Since Darwin
- The Panda's Thumb
- The Flamingo's Smile
- Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes
- Eight Little Piggies
- Dinosaur in a Haystack
- I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History

Books by Lewis Thomas:
- The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
- The Medusa and the Snail More Notes of a Biology Watcher
- The Fragile Species
- The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher
- Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

Books by Annie Dillard:
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

This is a hardcover first edition that I found at a thrift store.