>Richard Dawkins' The Ancestors Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life is an accessible account of evolutionary biology and goes to great lengths to disabuse even a sloppy reader of the popular [pre-genetic sequencing] notions of "missing links."

I think it's ironic to quote Dawkin's in this light considering he's spent most of his career a proponent of phyletic gradualism. He's spent most of his career arguing with people like Stephen Gould against the assertions you present here.