At Bor­ders yes­ter­day, a woman picked up The Rich­ness of Life: The Essen­tial Stephen Jay Gould, and got very excit­ed. Being a fan of the author, I eaves­dropped on her cell phone explanation. 

She began by get­ting very excit­ed at learn­ing “Pro­fes­sor Gould’s” first and mid­dle names, which sug­gest­ed that she might be encoun­ter­ing the joy of the late Har­vard pale­on­tol­o­gist for the first time. She began read­ing the book jack­et, which con­tained some text about his expla­na­tions of the ways life on earth devel­oped (not, alas “evolved”). She paused, told her friend that he “must be some tree­hug­ger,” and moved on.

We have a lot of work to do.