Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Sean Carroll, 2005)

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ISBN 0-3930-6016-0

Sean Carroll has a reputation. He is the kind of person who gets invited to write review articles about evolution's Big Questions in Nature. I've not yet encountered any published primary research by him (I daresay that's my fault for not looking in the right places) but as a synthesist his writings are well-known. In particular, an article published in Science by Carroll and his some time collaborator Andrew Knoll (Knoll & Carroll 1999) is widely quoted and, indeed, sometimes reproduced in its entirety.

So, I was expecting big things from the book.

I cannot unequivocally praise it, however. It is written in a very simplistic manner: that's not so much a criticism as an observation about its intended audience, but it definitely places a ceiling over what you might expect from it. And, within its pages, Carroll makes some rather bold claims for the "new" science he calls Evo Devo - ugh! - which I feel go a little too far. Read literally, you'd imagine that the whole concept of apomorphy was an invention of the evo devo crowd when, in fact, it has been around since Carroll and his colleagues were in nappies (=diapers, for the benefit of American readers). Longer.

But most seriously, I have to wonder how carefully Carroll compiled this book. There is one particular little area covered in the book which I have studied at some length, and now know a bit about: the Edicaran fauna. Only one page is given over to that topic in Endless Forms, yet, on that one page, we have two outright errors of fact and two incorrect species names which are probably just careless misspellings. (I won't elaborate here but, since it's important to back up any kind of statement like that, I've itemised the errors here .) Frankly it doesn't inspire confidence. How much else, that I don't know about, has he also gotten wrong?

Recommendation: If you're new to genes and things, then by all means give this book a try. But rent it from a library: don't buy it - this is not a book you'll refer back to. Anybody who already has an advanced reading knowledge of this subject should move straight on to Wallace Arthur's excellent book, The Origin of Animal Body Plans .

Look and Feel: My edition is the usual matt-finish paperback. Photographs are matt b&w, and the reproduction somewhat grainy.

Out-Take.

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Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Sean Carroll, 2005)

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