 Nine of fourteen chapters were serialized in "The New Yorker" beginning on June 2, 1951, and the book was published on July 2 by Oxford University Press.The serialization created a very large popular response, and the book was the subject of the feature review in "The New York Times Book Review" the day before publication.One chapter ("The Birth of an Island") was published in "The Yale Review"; it won the George Westinghouse Science Writing prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.