1809-1831; 1831-1836; 1836-1842; 1842-1851; 1851-1860; 1860-1871; 1871-1882.
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.
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
Invaluable for its day-to-day account of Charles Darwin's activities, this monumental biography keenly conveys the English naturalist's struggle to make evolution and natural selection acceptable by presenting them as the bedrock of Victorian middle-class values. Using a trove of previously untapped material, the authors illuminate Darwin as a freethinking agnostic fearful of being labeled an anarchist, a scientific titan trapped on a literary treadmill, a voyager on the Beagle appalled at ``low'' races of savages, and a paterfamilias who subordinated women but was completely dependent on his wife. Above all, British authors Desmond ( The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs ) and Moore, the editorial consultant to Cambridge University's Darwin Letters Project, plunge readers into the controversies of the era as parson-hating biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, socialist Alfred Russell Wallace, free-market capitalists and radical atheists bent Darwinism to their own purposes. Photos. BOMC, History Book Club and QPB alternates. (July)
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
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