The Riddle of the Dinosaur. Drawings by Douglas Henderson.
by (Gould, Stephen Jay) Wilford, John Noble
- Used
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
Moray, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. Quarto. Original grey boards, cream cloth backstrip, titles to spine and author's name to upper board in gilt and copper. With the dust jacket. 6 colour plates, illustrations and charts within the text. An excellent copy in the jacket with just a couple of miniscule rubbed spots and faint toning along the upper edges. First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the half title, "To Stephen Jay Gould, Many thanks for the inspiration of your essays. Best wishes, John Noble Wilford". A lovely copy of this popular account of recent developments in dinosaur palaeontology, including the discoveries that they were likely warm-blooded and that a comet probably caused their extinction, by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist John Noble Wilford (1933 - ). Wilford was responsible for the paper's front-page story on the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, and his by-line was the only one that appeared on the front page that day. Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, described one of the sentences in the Moon landing piece describing Armstrong' heart-rate during the descent to the surface as "one of the most elegant little uses of data I can recall seeing in a news article" (Dubner, "When Data Tell the Story", Freakonomics blog, July 21, 2009). Recipient Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) was one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His theory of punctuated equilibria challenged the idea that evolution is a slow and constant accumulation of changes, pointing out that instead it often occurs in rapid bursts of speciation followed by periods of stasis. He was a prominent defender of teaching evolution in schools and a leading critic of the field of sociobiology, which he saw as providing a pseudoscientific basis for discrimination. But he was best known as a popular science writer, penning three hundred essays that were originally published in Natural History Magazine. In 1991 Wilford reviewed Gould's fifth essay collection, Bully for Brontosaurus, calling its contents "provocative and delightfully discursive".
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Details
- Bookseller
- Alembic Rare Books (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 654
- Title
- The Riddle of the Dinosaur. Drawings by Douglas Henderson.
- Author
- (Gould, Stephen Jay) Wilford, John Noble
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1985
- Keywords
- Biology|Natural History|Zoology|Dinosaurs|Popular Science|Paleontology
Terms of Sale
Alembic Rare Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Alembic Rare Books
Biblio member since 2018
Moray
About Alembic Rare Books
We specialise in rare science books dating from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century, including first editions, signed copies, manuscripts, objects, and ephemera. We have particular expertise in natural history, genetics and evolution, anatomy, nuclear physics and the Manhattan Project, early computing, and women in science. We also carry books related to women's history and literature.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Half Title
- The blank front page which appears just prior to the title page, and typically contains only the title of the book, although, at...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Quarto
- The term quarto is used to describe a page or book size. A printed sheet is made with four pages of text on each side, and the...
- Inscribed
- When a book is described as being inscribed, it indicates that a short note written by the author or a previous owner has been...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...