In this uniquely personal collection of essays a self-proclaimed "incorrigible" and sometimes politically incorrect, biologist merges autobiography and history with accounts of intriguing animals and plants. In these essays, expect the unexpected as the author traces the parallel lives of Beatrix Potter and Lyn Margulis; or what Napoleon Bonaparte had in common with Giant Earwigs and how, in the end, they differed; and how personal hygiene and lice link Samuel Pepys to molecular clocks and human pre-history. The essays range widely through periods in the author's life, the byways of history, and strange curiosities of nature. Always entertaining and breezy, the essays are informative, sometimes funny and sometimes passionately serious.