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What an astonishing accomplishment and what a delightful blend of learning and lore is Darwin's Orchestra! But how the heck can any one person know all the history, science, literature, and art assembled so cleverly here? One wishes "Michael Sims" were the nom de plume for some slightly eccentric scholarly enterprise, a small syndicate of researchers and writers, say, bent on educating society by amusing society. But, alas, I am assured that Michael Sims is a living, breathing individual. Life is unfair. Nature distributes her gifts unequally.
But Darwin's Orchestra isn't just a parade ground for Sims's brilliance. In the first place, there is Darwin, who appears in a number of entries and informs those in which he is not actually present . . .
Then there is the cumulative effect of this book of days. You can't read it without becoming something of an environmentalist. The variety of the natural world and of the human responses to Nature--poetic, wise, silly, heroic--is simply amazing.
To read Darwin's Orchestra is to discover once again that we really do live in a world of wonders.
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