January 2008 The Reluctant Mr. Darwin.An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution by David Quammen. This book is part of the "Great Discoveries" seried from W.W. Norton & Company. This book puts Darwin and the Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection squarely and understandably into the context of late 17th and 18th Century scientific, social, and religious thought. This book corrected a couple of misconceptions I had about Darwin's work. First, the book points out that The Origin of Species... was written hastily, and originally as just an "abstract", in 1858 and 1859. The book clearly differentiated between the concept of the evolution of life from common organisms and the debates that raged among scientists even in Darwin's day on the mechanism by which evolution takes place: by natural selection as Darwin theorized, or by the accumulation of aquired traits (i.e Lamarkian) as was the prevailing thinking in the mid-19th Century.

I liked the names of the chapter titles. The chapter that dealt with the many jirations in the scientific community after the publication of Origin on the mechanism for evolution was titled "The Fittest Idea"...implying that Darwin's idea of natural selection eventually came out on top. Another chapter was called "The Kiwi's Egg" which described Darwin's "gestation" period for the theory...and perhaps a metaphor for how difficult it was to finally "deliver" it. I found an Xray of a female Kiwi with an egg (at the right).

Overall, I found this book informative and entertaining. This is a good book for discussion in a history book club, or even a book club exploring the interaction of science and religion. There were a couple of places where I think the author's personal views on science and religion slipped in to an otherwise objective biography. But this book gives a readable and concise biography of Charles Darwin, which I think needs to be required reading regardless of what side of the creation/evolution fence you sit.