Thinking whimsically makes serious science accessible. That’s a message that should be taken to heart by all readers who want to learn about evolution. Do Elephants Have Knees? invites readers into serious appreciation of Darwinian histories by deploying the playful thinking found in children’s books. Charles R. Ault Jr. weds children’s literature to recent research in paleontology and evolutionary biology. Inquiring into the origin of origins stories, Ault presents three portraits of Charles Darwin—curious child, twentysomething adventurer, and elderly worm scientist. Essays focusing on the origins of tetrapods, elephants, whales, and birds explain fundamental Darwinian concepts (natural selection, for example) with examples of fossil history and comparative anatomy. The imagery of the children’s story offers a way to remember and recreate scientific discoveries. By juxtaposing Darwin’s science with tales for children, Do Elephants Have Knees? underscores the importance of whimsical storytelling to the accomplishment of serious thinking. Charles Darwin mused about duck beaks and swimming bears as he imagined a pathway for the origin of baleen. A "bearduck" chimera may be a stretch, but the science linking not just cows but also whales to moose through shared ancestry has great merit. Teaching about shared ancestry may begin with attention to Bernard Wiseman’s Morris the Moose. Morris believes that cows and deer are fine examples of moose because they all have four legs and things on their heads. No whale antlers are known, but fossils of four-legged whales are. By calling attention to surprising and serendipitous echoes between children’s stories and challenging science, Ault demonstrates how playful thinking opens the doors to an understanding of evolutionary thought.

Beyond Science Standards captures a vision of science education both whimsical and serious. Ranging across examples from elementary to university level classrooms and grounded in philosophy and history, the stories address dimensions beyond the realm of bureaucratic standards. Its thesis brings into question the premise of scientific unity and its representation in school as notions of method, process, nature, and practice. Schools, no less than the sciences, profit from playful exploration—of musical instruments in fourth grade physical science, for example, and hotel lobby decorative rock in a college geology course. Aesthetic expression permeates geologic interpretation and evolutionary insight—in depicting dentition, for instance, in the history of the horse family and linking this history to changing landscapes. Participating in collecting local, high altitude weather data enhances trust in climate science, especially when the observations benefit the local farming community. Allied with historical examples of the conduct of science, Beyond Science Standards offers the reader inspiring stories of science teaching, varying from place to place, time to time, discipline to discipline, and purpose to purpose.

The dean of Columbia University's medical school explains why our bodies are out of sync with today's environment and how we can correct this to save our health. Over the past 200 years, human life-expectancy has approximately doubled. Yet we face soaring worldwide rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, mental illness, heart disease, and stroke. In his fascinating new book, Dr. Lee Goldman presents a radical explanation: The key protective traits that once ensured our species' survival are now the leading global causes of illness and death. Our capacity to store food, for example, lures us into overeating, and a clotting system designed to protect us from bleeding to death now directly contributes to heart attacks and strokes. A deeply compelling narrative that puts a new spin on evolutionary biology, Too Much of a Good Thing also provides a roadmap for getting back in sync with the modern world.