The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years proving that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. For among the finches of Daphne Major, natural selection is neither rare nor slow: it is taking place by the hour, and we can watch.

In this dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research, Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself. The Beak of the Finch is an elegantly written and compelling masterpiece of theory and explication in the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould.

With a new preface.

Author: Jonathan Weiner
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 05/30/1995
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780679733379

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 9.2
Point Value: 22
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 78263 / Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

Award: Pulitzer Prize - Winner

About the Author
Jonathan Weiner is one of the most distinguished popular-science writers in the country: his books have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, Time, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Scientific American, Smithsonian, and many other newspapers and magazines, and he is a former editor at The Sciences. He is the author of The Beak of the Finch; Time, Love, Memory; Long for This World; His Brother's Keeper; The Next One Hundred Years; and Planet Earth. He lives in New York, where he teaches science writing at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.