“The Flamingo’s Smile is about history,” writes the author in this volume of essays,
“. . . and about what it means to say that life is the product of a contingent past, not the inevitable and predictable result of simple, timeless laws of nature. Quirkiness and meaning are my two not-so-contradictory themes.”
Flamingos that feed upside down; flowers and snails that change from male to female; the probability that an errant asteroid sounded the death knell of dinosaurs and