John Maynard Smith is one of the most eminent of living evolutionary biologists, and leader of the school of reductionist geneticists that includes Richard Dawkins. this book collects together the best of his elegant essays, many of them originally published as book reviews in the New York review of books. He is an essayist of the calibre of Stephen Jay Gould, and coming from the opposite end of the biological spectrum, a worthy complement and opponent of Gould's.