Well, Ian, since you asked, "Has anyone heard of any good forthcoming books recently?" and since Joe Meche mentioned one of his, and since I see you asked about Darwin and Wallace recently, I'll tell you about my latest, so you can sit in breathless anticipation for a few months. My book Evolution, A Beginner's Guide, will be out around August (Oneworld Books, Oxford, England). It will be kind of a companion volume to my earlier Genetics, A Beginner's Guide, cowritten with my Canadian colleagues Tony Griffiths, David Suzuki, and Tara Cullis. It won't answer your "what if" question about Darwin, but it might help you to understand the process better and especially to understand the issue of traditional "young earth" creationism and the more recent issue of "intelligent design theory," which threaten to create such problems for public education. (And having mentioned that, I'll apologize to Dan Victor and Hal Opperman for mentioning something that could lead to untweeter-appropriate responses.)

Just back from about nine days in London, by the way, primarily to take in all the great theatre now going on there. Winter in London is not great for birding, but I finally got to see a couple of Green Woodpeckers--spectacular!--and a surprising Ring-necked Parakeet, a species that's now feral there.

Burt Guttman
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503