Books by subject

Charles Darwin

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.40 x 9.48 x 6.50
• Publisher: Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0195148304; (September 2002)

Book Description
Virtually unknown today, Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer of natural selection with Charles Darwin and an eminent scientist who stood out among his Victorian peers as a man of formidable mind and equally outsized personality. Now Michael Shermer rescues Wallace from the shadow of Darwin in this landmark biography. Here we see Wallace as perhaps the greatest naturalist of his age--spending years in remote jungles, collecting astounding quantities of specimens, writing thoughtfully and with bemused detachment at his reception in places where no white man had ever gone. Here, too, is his supple and forceful intelligence at work, grappling with such arcane problems as the bright coloration of caterpillars, or shaping his 1858 paper on natural selection that prompted Darwin to publish (with Wallace) the first paper outlining the theory of evolution. Shermer also shows that Wallace's self-trained intellect, while powerful, also embraced surprisingly naive ideas, such as his deep interest in the study of spiritual manifestations and seances. Shermer shows that the same iconoclastic outlook that led him to overturn scientific orthodoxy as he worked in relative isolation also led him to embrace irrational beliefs, and thus tarnish his reputation. As author of Why People Believe Weird Things and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Shermer is an authority on why people embrace the irrational. Now he turns his keen judgment and incisive analysis to Wallace's life and his contradictory beliefs, restoring a leading figure in the rise of modern science to his rightful place.
 

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Where Darwin Meets the Bible: Creationists and Evolutionists in America
by Larry Witham, Oxford University Press, Oct 2002

Product Details

• Hardcover: 624 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.86 x 9.59 x 6.71
• Publisher: Knopf; ISBN: 0679429328; (September 10, 2002)

Book Description
In 1858 Charles Darwin was forty-nine years old, a gentleman scientist living quietly at Down House in the Kent countryside, respected by fellow biologists and well liked among his wide and distinguished circle of acquaintances. He was not yet a focus of debate; his “big book on species” still lay on his study desk in the form of a huge pile of manuscript. For more than twenty years he had been accumulating material for it, puzzling over questions it raised, trying—it seemed endlessly—to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Publication appeared to be as far away as ever, delayed by his inherent cautiousness and wish to be certain that his startling theory of evolution was correct.

It is at this point that the concluding volume of Janet Browne’s biography opens. The much-praised first volume, Voyaging, carried Darwin’s story through his youth and scientific apprenticeship, the adventurous Beagle voyage, his marriage and the birth of his children, the genesis and development of his ideas. Now, beginning with the extraordinary events that finally forced the Origin of Species into print, we come to the years of fame and controversy.

For Charles Darwin, the intellectual upheaval touched off by his book had deep personal as well as public consequences. Always an intensely private man, he suddenly found himself and his ideas being discussed—and often attacked—in circles far beyond those of his familiar scientific community. Demonized by some, defended by others (including such brilliant supporters as Thomas Henry Huxley and Joseph Hooker), he soon emerged as one of the leading thinkers of the Victorian era, a man whose theories played a major role in shaping the modern world. Yet, in spite of the enormous new pressures, he clung firmly, sometimes painfully, to the quiet things that had always meant the most to him—his family, his research, his network of correspondents, his peaceful life at Down House.

In her account of this second half of Darwin’s life, Janet Browne does dramatic justice to all aspects of the Darwinian revolution, from a fascinating examination of the Victorian publishing scene to a survey of the often furious debates between scientists and churchmen over evolutionary theory. At the same time, she presents a wonderfully sympathetic and authoritative picture of Darwin himself right through the heart of the Darwinian revolution, busily sending and receiving letters, pursuing research on subjects that fascinated him (climbing plants, earthworms, pigeons—and, of course, the nature of evolution), writing books, and contending with his mysterious, intractable ill health. Thanks to Browne’s unparalleled command of the scientific and scholarly sources, we ultimately see Darwin more clearly than we ever have before, a man confirmed in greatness but endearingly human.

Reviewing Voyaging, Geoffrey Moorhouse observed that “if Browne’s second volume is as comprehensively lucid as her first, there will be no need for anyone to write another word on Darwin.” The Power of Place triumphantly justifies that praise.

From the Back Cover
"Continuing where Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995) left off, the British science historian completes her brilliant two-volume biography . . . A richly detailed, vivid, and definitive portrait with not a word wasted: the best life of Charles Darwin in the modern literature."
 --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author
Janet Browne trained as a biologist, took her Ph.D. in the history of science, and has served as associate editor of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. She is the author of several books and many scholarly papers. She is professor in the history of biology at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London and is currently president of the British Society for the History of Science.

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Dear Mr. Darwin: Letters on the Evolution of Life and Human Nature
by Gabriel Dove
 
Hardcover - 262 pages (September 4, 2000)
Univ California Press; ISBN: 0520227905

Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to talk to Charles Darwin about changes that have taken place in evolutionary biology since his death will be fascinated by this witty and literate blend of science, history, and biography. Stimulated by Darwin's relatively uninformed but obviously intelligent questions, Gabriel Dover takes the father of evolution on an exhilarating roller-coaster ride through the new genetics. The imagined two-way correspondence between Dover and Darwin about the surprising findings of modern genetics and the evolution of biological novelties, from genes to organisms, is both erudite and entertaining. In the process, Dover presents a startlingly original view of development and evolution that puts the individual organism on center stage.

Creating a cultural backdrop that ranges from the poetry of Ted Hughes to the music of Captain Beefheart to the current crisis in the Balkans, Dover debunks the naively deterministic view of selfish genes and their supposed lonely pursuits of self-replication and self-immortalization. He reveals a world of evolution far more intricate and subtle than can be expected from the notion of natural selection acting alone in which genes are born to cooperate.

About the Author
Gabriel Dover is an internationally recognized authority on the evolution of genes and genomes and is the originator of the molecular drive theory of evolution. He has written more than 150 research papers and edited several books on modern aspects of molecular and developmental evolution. He is currently Professor of Genetics at the University of Leicester.
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Editorial Reviews
Book Description
The innovative collection of original essays focuses on the ways in which geography, gender, race, and religion influenced the reception of Darwinism in the English-speaking world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The contributions to this volume collectively illustrate the importance of local social, physical, and religious arrangements, while showing that neither distance from Darwin's home at Down nor size of community greatly influenced how various regions responded to Darwinism. Essays spanning the world from Great Britain and North America to Australia and New Zealand explore the various meanings for Darwinism in these widely separated locales, while other chapters focus on the difference it made in the debates over evolution.
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The Descent of Man (Great Minds Series)

by Charles Darwin (reprint)

Paperback
Prometheus Books, Dec. 97
ISBN: 1573921769

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On the Origin of Species: A Facsimle of the First Edition

by Charles Darwin & Ernst W. Mayr (designer)

Paperback
Harvard University Press, July 1975
ISBN: 0674637526

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What Darwin Really Said

By Benjamin Farrington & Stephen Jay Gould

Paperback
Schocken Book, April 1996
ISBN=0805210628

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Charles Darwin and the Evolution Revolution : And the Evolution Revolution (Oxford Portraits in Science)
by Rebecca Stefoff

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Reading level: Young Adult
Hardcover Reissue edition (August 1996)
Oxford Univ Press; ISBN: 0195089960 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.58 x 9.48 x 6.68
Other Editions: Paperback
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