Product Description

Key Message:

Into the Jungle invites students to step into the lives of naturalists who followed their dreams, and often risked their lives, to explore the unknown. Each of the nine stories in this brief reader chronicles the dramatic adventures of an influential zoologist, geologist, paleontologist, or geneticist on their path to some of the most important discoveries that have shaped our understanding of how life has evolved. Accessible and engaging, Carroll’s storytelling approach helps students appreciate the physical hardships the featured explorers endured and the obstacles they had to overcome in challenging societal belief systems and initiating paradigm shifts in the scientific community. In reading the tales, students will also come to understand the frequent role of serendipity in scientific discovery.

Key Topics: Reverend Darwin’s Detour, Drawing a Line between Monkeys and Kangaroos, Life Imitates Life, Java Man, Where the Dragon Laid Her Eggs, The Day the Mesozoic Died, Miss Latimer’s Extraordinary Fish, A Sickle-Cell Safari, In Cold Blood: The Tale of the Icefish, General Review and Discussion, Sources and Further Reading

Market: Intended for those in learning the basics of evolutionary biology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97656 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author

Sean B. Carroll is Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.  Among the most prominent biologists working in the world today, Carroll is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, an award-winning author of  two highly acclaimed books on science for the general public (Endless Forms Most Beautiful and The Making of the Fittest), a widely known charismatic public speaker, an ardent advocate for science education, and a frequent guest on NOVA and other popular television and radio programs. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific papers on animal development and evolution and of two textbooks.

Customer Reviews

Good book but beware of overlaps
I purchased this book when recommended by Amazon after purchasing Remarkable Creatures by the same author. WARNING - the chapters in the two books substantially overlap! You are only getting two different chapters. While these chapters are interesting, they do not merit the overlap. Amazon should cease to push these two books together to their customers.

Robert Paul Malchow
The book "Into the Jungle" by Sean Carroll is simply an absolute delight to read. It brings excitement, life and humanity back to the scientific endeavors that led to our appreciation of the importance of evolution. Carroll makes clear that these were truly exciting adventures undertaken by vibrant and sometimes quirky characters whose colorful lives bring the subject truly to life.

Each chapter focuses on the adventures of a different individual - Darwin in the first (of course), followed by Wallace, Bates, Dubois with his Java man, Chapman and his amazing excursion for fossils to China, the Alvarezes and the asteroid impact theory of extinction, Courtenay-Latimer & Smith of coelacanth fame, Tony Allison & the safari to examine the sickle-cell gene story, and last, DeVries and others associated with the ice fish phenomenon.

And adventures they have indeed. The stories are told in a delightfully vivid prose that makes the individuals and the times they lived in really come alive. All this while still having each chapter point out the scientific impact of each of these unique adventures.

At the end of each chapter are 3-5 questions that would require a few sentences to answer. This has made it simply ideal as an adjunct to a course in Introductory Biology. Students in our Honors Program often look for something to supplement their course work during the semester; I point them to this easy to read text and ask them to read the book and hand in a copy of the answers to the questions for each chapter each week and discuss briefly what they have read.

The book is a light an enjoyable read - I simply couldn't put it down. Don't expect extremely detailed and dry analyses of evolutionary theory and data. Rather, expect an adventure!

Robert Paul Malchow, Ph.D.

Don't know how to rate this one
Sean Carroll: brilliant evolutionary biologist and great author of "Making of the Fittest" [a must read]writes this book for what I'd guess is middle school students. Obviously, Carroll is a major league science popularizer. This book doesn't hook me, though. I don't know if it's just that I'm too old [52] and know the more detailed accounts of many of these stories. I'd like to hear from parents what their kids think of it.

The chapters have questions in the back like a textbook. So it feels like a "school book" [which turns me off as a pleasure reader]. And, in fact, it might work really well in that context...say one story a month throughout the school year.

What middle school book by Sean Carroll would I stand in line for? Explaining the DNA evidence of inter-relatedness across time and species. I think an 8th or 9th grader would just be bursting with interest about such a presentation.