SOURCE: Jones, Steve. “Up against the Wall.” New York Review of Books 43, no. 16 (17 October 1996): 33-4.

In the following review, Jones criticizes Dinosaur in a Haystack as informative but irritating and discusses Gould's “spread of excellence” concept in Full House.

Stephen Jay Gould on a bad day can be the Lincoln Continental of science writing—ponderous, well upholstered, and designed to travel in a straight line. Comfortable, certainly; assured—no one can doubt that—and if you turn on the radio you are certain to get grand opera; but, somehow, well, just too Executive Style, too Harvard Yard, to sell anywhere except in America.

His latest pair of books, though, shows evidence of a dramatic shift in design. Dinosaur in a Haystack, published last winter and the seventh in his series of miscellaneous pieces collected from Natural History magazine, sits firmly among the whitewall tire school of essayists. The...