Don't be fooled by the small size of this book; it is not a book for a casual reader. If you are not familiar with evolutionary genetics, you may find the amount of jargon offputting. Do you know what cytoplasmic streaming is? Then you will find it readable. The author never bothers to define any terms, but sprinkles them freely throughout his work. This is okay if you are aiming a book at a scientific audience, but this is aimed at a general audience, or at least the author thinks it is. In addition, it probably isn't the best work to choose, since it was written nearly 20 years ago, and EvoDevo has moved along a lot since that time. The final chapter was absolutely out of the realm of science, as he speculated that your political views determined which view of evolutionary development you took; as he became more conservative, his views moved toward that of a reductionist. There may be some truth to that, but I think there are way to many people on the side of genetic control for a group of specialists mostly dominated by political liberals for this to be the case. In any case, it was strictly anecdotal, and should have been left out of the book, since it appeared it might have been included for the purpose of making a "point" about people who were politically out of tune with him. This is not the place for that, and without more solid eidence than, oh, I know some people, and this is my own views, this should not have been included at all. Overall, a bit of a disappointment, but then, it is quite out of date, so maybe I shouldn't have expected much. ( )