Charles Darin Voyaging [Paperback]

Few lives of great men offer so much interest--and so many mysteries--as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of nineteenth-century science, whose ideas are still inspiring discoveries and controversies more than a hundred years after his death. Yet only now, with the publication ofVoyaging,the first of two volumes that will constitute the definitive biography, do we have a truly vivid and comprehensive picture of Darwin as man and as scientist. Drawing upon much new material, supported by an unmatched acquaintance with both the intellectual setting and the voluminous sources, Janet Browne has at last been able to unravel the central enigma of Darwin's career: how did this amiable young gentleman, born into a prosperous provincial English family, grow into a thinker capable of challenging the most basic principles of religion and science? The dramatic story ofVoyagingtakes us from agonizing personal challenges to the exhilaration of discovery; we see a young, inquisitive Darwin gradually mature, shaping, refining, and finally setting forth the ideas that would at last fall upon the world like a thunderclap inThe Origin of Species.
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Janet Browne,trained as a zoologist and historian of science, is a lecturer in the history of biology at the Wellcome Institute in London. She was formerly a research fellow at Harvard University and associate editor of theCorrespondence of Charles Darwin.She is the author of many scholarly papers and several books, includingThe Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography. This book deserves the adjectives of praise traditionally used by reviewers to describe masterpieces. . . . It is wonderful and marvelous, even magisterial. ---Stephen Jay Gould,The New York Review of Books There is no better chronicle of Darwin as human being, friend, and indefatigable scientist, nor anywhere a richer description of his milieu, his family life, his social circle, and hlÓg