This new book by a most distinguished scientist and writer is dedicated to diversity -- in science and in life. Like Dyson's two previous books, Disturbing the Universe and Weapons and Hope, it is a most rare treat, a combination of scientific knowledge and wonderful writing.

In celebrating the diversity of our world and ourselves, Dyson explores a rich range of subjects, organized, as he explains, in two parts: "Part One is about life as a scientific phenomenon, about our efforts to understand the nature of life and its place in the universe. Part Two is about ethics and politics, about the local problems introduced by our species into the existence of life on this planet." Dyson continues: "The two parts are not entirely disconnected... I look both at scientific and at human problems from the point of view of a lover of diversity -- the great gift which life has brought to our planet and may one day bring to the rest of the universe."

The book is a generous rewriting of Dyson's famous Gifford Lectures, a series that has produced several classic books, including William James' Varieties of Religious Experience and Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality.

Here, surely, is another great book.