Will I love The Beak of the Finch?

I savored Weiner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book chronicling the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant on the mating behavior, and so much more, of finches in the Galápagos Islands.

You’ll feel as if you are there with these modern-day Darwins as they uncover the private lives of birds that have played such a seminal role in evolutionary biology. 

When I was in the Galapagos, I volunteered to help scientists study the finches on Daphne Major Island. There were just two of us on an island surrounded by sharks. Every Darwin's finch had been ringed, and I had to observe what they ate. It was an experience that has left an indelible mark on my psyche.

The research was part of a project by Peter and Rosemary Grant, who spent twenty years following in Darwin's footsteps. Not only did they demonstrate the robustness of his theory, but they also showed that the process works in decades, not millennia.

Jonathan… show more.