An electrifying account of the extraordinary untold history behind Darwin's theory of evolution
Rebecca Stott is a novelist and historian. She is Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and an Affiliated Scholar at the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University. She is the author of eleven books including three non-fiction history of science books: Darwin and the Barnacle, Theatres of Glass: The Woman who Brought the Sea to the City and Oyster, two historical novels, and most recently the bestselling Ghostwalk, shortlisted for the Jelf First Novel Award and the Society of Authors First Book Award, and The Coral Thief, both of which have been published in many different countries. She is regularly asked to contribute to radio and TV documentaries and arts programmes. Rebecca Stott lives in Cambridge.
Extraordinarily wide-ranging and engaging ... Stott's gifts as a
novelist mean that each of her subjects emerges as living in
ordinary weather and among objects, family and political
difficulties ... She draws on an array of scholarship and assembles
it into an intricate sequence of stories and investigations that
are her own ... Gripping
*Gillian Beer, The Sunday Telegraph*
Riveting ... told with style and historical nous ... Stott has done
a wonderful job in showing just how many extraordinary people had
speculated on where we came from before the great theorist
dispelled any doubts
*Richard Fortey, Guardian*
A fascinating history of an idea that is crucial to our understand
of life on earth
*Ziauddin Sardar, Independent*
***** Mesmerising, colourful and often moving ... a richly drawn
exploration of the key figures on Darwin's list ... this many
threaded story of intellectual development is hypnotic. The subject
is science, but Stott has a novelist's confidence ... this is a
sympathetic examination of the innate human qualities of curiosity
and inquiry
*Daily Telegraph*
Thrilling ... impressively researched ... A gripping and ambitious
history of science which gives a vivid sense of just how many
forebears Darwin had; even if none of them can match the man
himself
*Sunday Times*
Rebecca Stott's beautifully written and compelling book is the
story of some of the men - and they were all men - who came before,
and how the evolution of their ideas mirrors the evolution of
species ... These mavericks and heretics put their lives on the
line. Finally, they are getting the credit they deserve
*Independent on Sunday*
Clever, compassionate and compellingly written, Stott has
interwoven history and science to enchanting effect. The evolution
of the theory of evolution is a brilliant idea for a book, and she
has realised it wonderfully
*Tom Holland*
Stott's research is broad and unerring; her book is wonderful ...
An exhilerating romp through 2,000 years of fascinating scientific
history
*Nature*
From Aristotle onwards, evolutionists have - thank God - always
been a quarrelsome lot; and not much has changed. Rebecca Stott
shows how dispute, prejudice and rage have accompanied their
science from the very beginning. Darwin's Ghosts is a gripping
history of the history of life and of those who have studied it,
with plenty of lessons for today - perhaps for today's biologists
most of all
*Steve Jones*
A masterful retelling of the collective daring of a few like-minded
men who had the courage to publish their speculations at a time
when to do so, for political as well as religious reasons, was to
risk everything. It is the story of an idea that would change the
modern world
*Observer*
Impressive scholarship and compelling narrative; a fine book
*Brenda Maddox*
Charles Darwin provided the mechanism for the evolution of the
exquisite adaptations found in plants and animals but the awareness
that species can change had been growing long before him. With
wonderful clarity Rebecca Stott traces how ideas about biological
evolution themselves evolved in the minds of great biologists from
Aristotle onwards. Darwin would have loved this brilliant book -
and so do I
*Sir Patrick Bateson, President of the Zoological Society of
London*
Ms. Stott stages sharply drawn encounters and depicts domestic
lives and social worlds in rich and convincing detail ... captures
the breathless excitement of investigation on the cusp of the
unknown ... a lively, original book
*International Herald Tribune*
It takes great skill and scholarship to tell the story well, and
Rebecca Stott does it wonderfully. Here is a rich tale indeed. It
needs a novelist like Rebecca Stott to get to grips with it; and so
she does, triumphantly
*The Literary Review*
Stott provides the lucid intellectual genealogy of evolution that
the great man could not
*New Scientist*
Stott’s lively, original history of evolutionary ideas flows easily
across continents and centuries
*New York Times Notable Books of 2012*
The ghosts so richly described in Ms Stott's enjoyable book are the
descendants of Aristotle and Bacon and the ancestors of today's
scientists
*Wall Street Journal*
In telling the stories of these men, Ms. Stott - who is also a
novelist - writes with a novelist's flair ... richly described
*Wall Street Journal Europe*
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