Darwin

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This biography of Charles Darwin attempts to capture the private unknown life of the real man - the gambling and gluttony at Cambridge, his gruelling trip round the globe, his intimate family life, worries about persecution and thoughts about God. Central to all of this, his pioneering efforts on the theory of evolution now that recent studies have overturned the commonplace views of Darwin that have held for more than a century.

Reviews

A book that makes such an astounding physical as well as cerebral impact is a very rare commodity indeed.--Anthony Burgess
A riveting tour de force that meets the need for a new biography on the grand scale. . . . Rarely have the dynamic relations between a scientist's life and his theories been so fully, so forcefully recounted.--Roy Porter
At last, a biography to match the man. . . . Darwin, his family, his colleagues, and his milieu come alive in this book. . . . Superbly written.--Everett Menselson, Harvard University
Pick is up and you are hooked, by the racy writing, the memorable turns of phrase, the historical insights and the sheer bravado of their performance.--William Bynum
Unquestionably the finest [biography] ever written about Darwin. . . . Darwin has now become, and properly, the quintessentially socially embedded scientist. Desmond and Moore are brilliant in their pursuit of this truly unifying theme.--Stephen Jay Gould

Author Bio

Adrian Desmond studied at London University and Harvard, has higher degrees in vertebrate palaeontology and the history of science, and a Ph.D. for his work on Victorian evolution. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Biology Department at University College London. Adrian Desmond's bestselling Darwin (Penguin, 1992, written with James Moore), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Britain, the Grand Comisso Prize in Italy and the Watson Davis Prize from the History of Science Society in America. In 1997 the British Society for the History of Science awarded it the first Dingle Prize for the best book of the decade in communicating the history of science to a wide audience. His study of the pre-Darwinian generation, The Politics of Evolution (1989), received the Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society. He has also published The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs (1975), The Ape's Reflexion (1979) and Archetypes and Ancestors (1982). In 1993 the Society for the History of Natural History awarded him its Founders' Medal. James Moore is a reader in history of science and technology at the Open University.