Representative Trantis  wrote:

> I have read some of the workd of Dawkins, and have Read Darwin's two major
> works, (Origin and Descent).
> 
> I am curious to read something from the 'other great' in evolutionary
> theory.
> 
> Can anyone please recommend a title or two?
> 
> Thanks

There are several "other greats" about. Here are Gould's books that can
be read as a layman with no real background knowledge:

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1977. Ever since Darwin: reflections in natural
history. New York: Norton.

---. 1980. The panda's thumb: more reflections in natural history. New
York: Norton.

---. 1983. Hen's teeth and horse's toes. New York: Norton.

---. 1985. The flamingo's smile: reflections in natural history. New
York: Norton.

---. 1987. Time's arrow, time's cycle: myth and metaphor in the
discovery of geological time. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press.

---. 1987. An urchin in the storm: essays about books and ideas. New
York: W.W. Norton.

---. 1990. Wonderful life: the Burgess Shale and the nature of history.
London: Hutchinson Radius.

---. 1991. Bully for brontosaurus: further reflections in natural
history. London: Penguin.

---. 1993. Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history. New
York: Norton.

---. 1995. Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history. New
York: Harmony Books.

---. 1996. Full house: the spread of excellence from Plato to Darwin.
New York: Harmony Books.

But this one is a hard slog:

---. 2002. The structure of evolutionary theory. Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

The *real* Greats of the 20th C are:

Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1937. Genetics and the origin of species. New
York: Columbia University Press.

Fisher, RA. 1930. The genetical theory of natural selection. Oxford UK:
Clarendon Press,  (rev. ed. Dover, New York, 1958).

Mayr, Ernst. 1942. Systematics and the origin of species from the
viewpoint of a zoologist. New York: Columbia University Press.

---. 1991. One long argument: Charles Darwin and the genesis of modern
evolutionary thought. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

---. 1997. This is biology: the science of the living world. Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Simpson, George Gaylord. 1953. The major features of evolution. New
York: Columbia University Press.

---. 1984. Tempo and mode in evolution. New York: Columbia University
Press. Original edition, 1944.

If you want an intro into the ideas of evolution, try

Quammen, David. 1996. The song of the dodo: island biogeography in an
age of extinctions. New York: Scribner.

or the "standard" textbook:

Futuyma, Douglas J. 1998. Evolutionary biology. 3rd ed. Sunderland,
Mass.: Sinauer Associates.

Some others that will give you a good survey include:

Gee, Henry. 2001. Deep time: The revolution in evolution. London: Fourth
Estate.

        On cladistics.

Ghiselin, Michael T. 1974. The economy of nature and the evolution of
sex. Berkeley: University of California Press.

        A "selfish gene" theorist before Dawkins.

Eldredge, Niles. 1985. Time frames: the evolution of punctuated
equilibria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

        With Gould, one of the authors of punctuated equilibrium.
Includes the paper that started it all.

---. 1995. Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate. London UK:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

        His take on the state of modern evolutionary theory. Lots of
fun.


Jones, Steve. 2000. Almost Like a Whale. London: Anchor (Transworld
Publishers).

        A geneticist's rewriting of the Origin

Lewontin, Richard C. 1974. The genetic basis of evolutionary change,
Columbia biological series no. 25. New York: Columbia University Press.

        This classic is a foundational work on the "American" view of
evolution, which Gould is considered to be part of.

Maynard Smith, John. 1993. The theory of evolution. Canto ed. Cambridge;
New York: Cambridge University Press.

        And this is a well-written for the layman intro to the "British"
view of evolution, which some Williams, an American, gets included with.

Williams, George C. 1966. Adaptation and natural selection: A critique
of some current evolutionary thought. Princeton NJ: Princeton University
Press.

Williams, George C. 1992. Natural selection: domains, levels, and
challenges. New York: Oxford University Press.

Finally, I really still like this, which is easy to obtain and
thought-provoking.

Stebbins, G. Ledyard. 1977. Processes of organic evolution. 3d ed,
Concepts of modern biology series. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall.

Enjoy.
-- 
John Wilkins
"And this is a damnable doctrine" - Charles Darwin, Autobiography
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