Recently finished reading Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould. I intend to re-read sections of it to be better able to talk to its argument. It was a good read, somewhat challenging at times but well worth the effort.
A quote from the opening to entice you into picking it up:
"Full House is a companion volume of sorts to my earlier book Wonderful Life (1989). Together, they present an integrated and unconventional view of life's history and meaning --- one that forces us to reconceptualize our notion of human status within this history. Wonderful Life asserts the unpredictability and contingency of any particular event in evolution --- and emphasizes that the origins of Homo sapiens must be viewed as such an unrepeatable particular, not an expected consequence. Full House presents the general argument for denying that progress defines the history of life or even exists as a general trend at all. Within such a view of life-as-a-whole, humans can occupy no preferred status as a pinnacle or culmination. Life has always been dominated by its bacterial mode. "
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