The Beak of the Finch

 Jonathan Weiner's The Beak of the Finch is a spellbinding, beautifully written portrait of five years in the lives of two biologists studying Darwin's finches on Daphne Major, a tiny island in the Galápagos. For twenty years, Peter and Rosemary Grant have been observing these birds' struggle for survival and dominance among themselves. Their observations provide a window into the evolutionary process itself: natural selection. In the process, we watch evolution unfold right before our eyes--an ongoing experiment that yields ever more subtle discoveries about life.