The Other Left Side: Left and Right in Evolution and Other Essays

Goldschmidt has won the top awards in Holland and is well known internationally within the field of science writing. Now for the first time available in English, his essays crackle with insight and joy at the discoveries to be made in the world in which we live—whether comparing the courtship rituals of men on the dance floor to the springtime courtship rituals of Eurasian wading birds, or visiting Hitler's watercolors in the vault of the US Army Center of Military History in Washington, DC, or noting how clumsy swifts are when brooding on land, or writing fascinatingly about left- and right-handedness.In the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould and Lewis Thomas, a gorgeous book of essays steeped in current evolutionary thought, one that invites readers to delight in our evolutionary present. In essays like "How to Fake Faking," and the title essay, "The Other Left Side: the Phenomenon of Left and Right in Evolution," Tijs Goldschmidt shatters our expectations of what a scientific essay is and then rebuilds it in intensely personal, artful and wry ways. This is a book for any reader, one that turns the deep currents of contemporary evolutionary biology into something to

In 2000, Goldschmidt was awarded the most prestigious Dutch prize for essay writing, the Jan Hanlo Essay Prize, for his book Oversprongen (Crossovers). The book was subsequently translated into numerous languages and received several awards in the Netherlands and abroad. . Goldschmidt lives in Amsterdam. SHERRY MACDONALD's translations from the Dutch for American publishers include Darwin's Dreampond (The MIT Press 1996) by Tijs Goldschmidt and Tonguecat (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2003) by Peter Verhelst. About the Author Trained in animal ecology and evolutionary biology, TIJS GOLDSCHMIDT abandoned his academic career at Leiden University in 1993 to dedicate himself fully to writing. He has since written a number of other books and given many lectures, inc

. Darwin's Dreampond: Drama in Lake Victoria (1996, The MIT Press) was his first book published in English, an account of a five-year stay in  Tanzania in the 1980s, during which he studied the now-renowned cichlid fishes of Lake Victoria. The book was subsequently translated into numerous languages and re