Shipman begins her book with Darwin and reflects on his struggles in presenting "The Origin of the Species" as he understood the controversy it would unleash. It is remarkable that the controversy has not abated in over a hundred years, but has instead evolved as delineated in the book. Shipman's work should be required reading for students in a variety of disciplines to give them the tools to defend against the henchmen of pseudoscience such as Rushton and Kevin MacDonald. Shipman reflects on the complexities of evolution and of human differences while making it clear that the human experience is diverse, and the use of science to support racism is not good science by any measure. This book is need badly in an updated version to uncover the flawed arguments of the newly prominent racists who are sheltered by academia.

Creationists can be funny (See below). But this is no laughing matter. Pat Shipman, and other scientists, should be applauded for taking a stand against pseudoscience, not belittled. Kudos to Shipman for writing such a wonderful book.

Alas a writer who acknowledges that evolution implies racism and selection of the superior race. Politicians have been trying to suppress this, but they will fail in the end, as evolution wins. You cannot stop nature.

This is a fascinating and very well-written account of the discovery of the first Neandertal skeletons, and the shock waves they caused (and are still causing) throughout science.

The Victorian mania for collecting, cataloging and naming natural specimens led to the formulation of the Great Tree of Life, or Chain of Being, arranged from the lowliest organisms in an orderly progression up to "the pinnacle of creation, Man" -- or more accurately, white Anglo-Saxon Englishmen in waist-coats.

The discovery of proto-human remains in Germany in 1856 threw this 'orderliness' of nature into disarray. Did not The Bible state that everything was created all-at-once in perfect harmony? How then could an obviously human skeleton -- but equally obviously not that of a modern Englishman -- have come to rest in the soil beneath their feet?

The ripples from these discoveries were to penetrate the farthest reaches of scientific endeavor, as man began to comprehend geologic time (as opposed to the Biblical timeframe), repeated mass extinctions (as opposed to Christian creation myths) and mankind's own humble origins, starkly laid out on the table before them.

With the help of a certain Mr. Charles A. Darwin, whose own ideas on the mutability of species he had been harboring privately for 20 years, science was soon to face a new conception of itself, basing theory on evidence and logic rather than religious texts and teachings. It is a revolution which is still very much on-going today.

The authors are to be commended for making a potentially dry and technical subject come alive, with the intrigues, power struggles, vanity, hubris and anguish of the revolution ably depicted.

This book is rich in detail and a great study of the tactics taken by paleontolgists in proposing theories and testing those proposals by working with fossils and similar living creatures that may cast light on the theory. But inevitably, it seems, for every proposal and positive test result someone else will come up with another test for the same proposal and the results will be negative. In the end there are so many questions without firm answers that it becomes hard to know which, if any, or which combinations of these questions, would resolve the matter. It seems that Archaeopteryx had feathers (although there is discussion of those who thought the feather impressions were forgeries). It seems that it was a dinosaur (not a bird). But was it 'proaves' the precursor bird? Apparently the fossil record of primitive birds is too poor for us to know - I would have liked more details about these early fossil birds. Was Archaeopteryx warm blooded? Were any dinosaurs? Could Archaeopteryx fly or were the feathers merely for heat insulation? For me I would have liked more on 'pro-feather' - the precursor to feathers. At the very end of the book we learn of a find in 1996 in China of a dinosaur that did not have wings but appears to have feathers on its back and sides. Other flying creatures are discussed - pterosaurs, insects, bats (surprisingly from the fossil record quite recently evolved) and gliding mammals such a sugar gliders. There is also some aerodynamics in this book as researchers try to determine if Archaeopteryx could fly. The result of their aerodynamic studies? As always - uncertainty!

I am reviewing a paperback copy of this book published by Wiedenfeld and Nicolson. It's a handsome book but I cannot understand what possessed the publishers to put a pterosaur fossil on the front cover rather than Archaeopteryx. To be fair, they do point this out on the back cover which is how I finalised realised this - but who pays much attention to back cover blurbs?

high quality of work done by Shipman as seen so many in other comments & I also totally agree with it. The only shame is that she holds her interpretation on the theories "ground up" or "tree down". The right answer which could convince both sides, so far, can't be expected. Even so, I wish she had expressed her own opinion inspired through her labourious studies. The component & development of the text is simply excellent. That's why I feel something missed.

This beautifully written and engaging book is still available in hardback at a surprisingly low price from Daedalus.com (at least when I last checked August 1, 2002).

Highly recommended for both its written style and content.

This book reminds me that Christian Huygens "knew" that there was so much hemp growing on the planet Jupiter. How did he know?. . .Moons! That's how. Jupiter has so many moons. These would be used by lots of sailors. . .to guide their ships at night. Lots of sailors. . .lots of ships. Ships require miles of rope if they are to sail. Hence there must be a lot of hemp on Jupiter. And so it is that Walker makes so much out of so little evidence... An ancient hominid dies with a chronic bone disease and therefore must have had a lot of concerned family/companions and a massive social structure to have survived. The anterior-posterior dimension of the skeleton's cervical spinal canal is narrow, therefore the chest musculature couldn't have been sufficient to support the ability to speak (never mind that elderly humans frequently have spinal canals of 8 mm and never complain of problems speaking). It's fun to speculate about our ancestor and Walker and his team deserve great credit for finding the fine H. erectus specimen and scientifically documenting his sex, age, time of appearance on earth etc. maybe we should reserve accolades on this one until we have some more evidence....

Aside from being a fantastic professor and wonderful conversationalist Alan Walkier is a great writer. He and his wife Pat Shipman have taken many literary ventures together; this one being their best.

The challenge in popular scientific books is to make potentially dense material easy to read so that the reader doesn't feel burdened by the material he or she reads. Walker and Shipman do this very well in "Wisdom of the Bones". Walker successfully integrates two stories here- one of his trip to Kenya leading up to his team's revolutionary discovery of Turkana Boy (Homo erectus/ ergaster), and the other of Turkana Boy and his bretherin.

The book doubles as a pleasurable novel and a factually saturated work-- I've found this book an invaluable resource in many classes, but i've also enjoyed the plot line. Walker keeps one engaged throughout the book-- not an easy feat in the scientific world.

This book is an example of excellent science writing. The picture of Homo Erectus ' everyday life immerges through the fascinating story of hard work done by a group of paleoanthropologists and other scientists. The book begins with the author's observation of how much different he is from a Turkana woman that he casually observes. The author then reflects back on the past investigations of the creature (Eugene Dubois, "Peking Man", etc.). The most interesting part of the book includes the description of the investigative processes that dig into the life of a creature that lived around 1.5 million years ago. I really liked the author's reasoning for the hypothesis that Homo Erectus possessed such human attributed quality as caring for the old and infirm. At the end of the book Mr. Walker returns to his original observation from another angle. This time he makes a reader feel that no matter how different other cultures in the world may be, we are still the same species, whereas Homo Erectus was a creature from a different world. It was a transitory creature of the process that made man from man-ape. This book really leaves the impression of a well thought up and very readable science writing, which will appeal to any reader interested in the origins of our species.

I was initially put off by the fly-on-wall narrative style - direct quotations from meetings between friends or lovers and even personal and feelings and motivations being put down as fact. This is intermixed with copies of letters and diary entries that are well noted ... a trend in biography that I have a hard time getting used to.

After several chapters though, I was engaged by the substance of the story and these concerns faded somewhat for me. I also find it a bit unpalatable for a modern biography to gloss over quite so neatly the contributions or the conditions of the native people who were forced labor under colonial rule. These peoples may have little history written down, but it seems odd to not for the modern biographer/historian not to at least acknowlegement the situation.

I agree that the Amazon editor's review that Ms. Shipman is at times "overwrought" in the defense of a rather ghastly but brilliant man. Dubois turned out to be rather visionary in hindsight, but one gets the feeling of some of the other major players being slighted in this re-telling just because they happened to be wrong.

I did enjoy the book though, and I reccommend to anyone with an interest in evolutionary biology and the history of science. For the simple biography lover - my enthusiasm is lukewarm, the material is really only interesting in the context of the greaqt debate (that rages even today) about the origins of the human species. This book provides little context or additional information about that battle and would likely leave the uninitiated reader either confused or wanting more.

I recommend this book to anyone regardless of her or his interest in human anthropology. Shipman's portal to the science is well written and tinted with full details of family life. A three dimensional portrait of Eugene Dubois that Shipman has deftly produced in the manner of a Masterpiece Theatre episode. This flavors the science so it goes down like dutch chocolate. Now that I'm hooked on the science, I'm tackling her co-authored "Neandertals".

The sentences in this book have been so elegantly crafted that they flowed like a smooth running brook. Since my wife and I like to alternate reading chapters from anthropology adventure stories out loud to each other, we were captivated by the editorial polishing that allowed us to pick up speed with nary a fumble (except for the occasional technical, Dutch or Indonesian words). While we had expected rough and tumble science, we were pleasantly surprised by how much this one was about Eugene Dubois's human relationships and the ups and downs of his feelings. (Perhaps there is a sex difference among biographers that accounts for this.)

The first half of the book describes Dubois's family and friends to the exclusion of much of his science, with somewhat of an opposite imbalance in the second half. For example, early on we gleaned from the occasional aside and bibliography (annoyingly given mostly in Dutch without an English translation) that he wrote several papers and a book on the evolution of the sun as discerned from studying the earth's geology. Unfortunately, the author does not tell her readers how or why he did this, or how much of his time this took up, or even what he hoped these efforts would accomplish for him, though we are told that he was achingly ambitious. Instead we find excruciating details of his relations with his family and friends, and how he traversed the flora and geography of Java. Eventually, he discovered Pithecanthropus erectus, the "missing link" between man and ape.

Later, after Dubois and his family return to the Netherlands, we do get excellent blow-by- blow accounts of the scientific in-fighting as other fossils like Peking Man and other Java men are discovered that cause reinterpretation of his finds and provoke controversy about them (later they are relabeled Homo erectus). By then, despite ourselves, we were hooked on his family relations and so frustrated to suddenly be left hanging about what happened on that front. Shipman tells us how and why Dubois separated from his wife, but not explicitly why they got back together or how they get along after they did. While his children tragically die, or wander off, or or make bad marriages, we get little information about how he does end up with descendants.

Even the scientific story has some inexplicable gaps. The big debate rages over the status of Java Man and Peking Man along with Neanderthal and other finds. Even Piltdown Man takes center stage at one point. But the debates over Taung Child and other discoveries in Africa are never mentioned. Did I miss something? We both came away feeling that the book got too long and instead of editing it down, section by section, a production decision was made to simply delete some of the chapters!

Despite these glitches I learned a lot from this book. Dubois did more than find a great fossil. He wrote a great deal on encephalization quotients (i.e., the ratios of brain size to expected body size) anticipating much current work in the evolution of the brain. He also put forward daring alternatives to Darwinian gradualism, like saltations that occur in brain size and so create new species. He has major triumphs and tribulations, and then triumphs again. And most of all, The Man Who Found the Missing Link illustrates the old adage that a man's greatest strengths are also his greatest weaknesses. The independent, bold, ambitious tenacity of the younger Dubois that enabled him to abandon an early professorship to seek his fortune in Java, renders him a needlessly arrogant, stubborn, recalcitrant scientist and lonely man in his later age.

This book covers bone biology, bone structure and function (particularly useful are the drawings of muscle attachments), and the interpretation of bones (age, sex, race, stature, trauma, disease, etc.). A very good book to gain understanding of why bones have the morphology they do.