Darwin and the Beagle

The format is approximately 7.75 inches by 10.25 inches. 280 pages. Illustrated dust jacket. Illustrated endpapers. Color frontispiece. Illustrations (some in color). Chronology of the Voyage of the Beagle. Bibliography. Index. DJ has some wear and soiling and is in a plastic sleeve. A substantial portion of this work appeared originally in The New Yorker. Alan McCrae Moorehead, AO, OBE (22 July 1910 29 September 1983) was a war correspondent and author of histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962). Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937. He became a renowned foreign correspondent for the London Daily Express. Writer, world traveler, biographer, essayist, journalist, Moorehead was one of the most successful writers in English of his day. During World War II he won an international reputation for his coverage of campaigns in the Middle East and Asia, the Mediterranean and Northwest Europe. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In 1966, Moorehead made what became for him the first of an annual series of visits to Australia. There he had completed a television script for his manuscript "Darwin and the Beagle", but tragedy struck before the book was published. That December, he had a major stroke. At 56, Moorehead, one of the great communicators of his time, could neither speak, read, nor write. Through his wife, however, his writing went on. Darwin and the Beagle was brought out as an illustrated book in 1969. Charles Robert Darwin FRS FRGS FLS FZS JP (12 February 1809 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honored by burial in Westminster Abbey. Derived from a Kirkus review: This story of the historic venture is told with Mr. Moorehead's customary vigor and skill. Of particular interest to the author is the tightrope relationship between two young men who initially respected and liked one another's company--Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy, Captain of the Beagle. An aristocratic Tory, a brilliant navigator, a stern, proud, religious man, FitzRoy had been sent to survey coasts of the Southern Hemisphere. The boyish and engaging Darwin finally clambered on board as naturalist, after a series of chances and spur-of-the-moment decisions to detour from his intended clerical career. Following the initial miseries of seasickness and shipboard orientation, Darwin totally succumbed to the excitement of exploration, collection and discovery through wild, exotic, dangerous, difficult terrains and seas. And almost imperceptibly Darwin's inherited religious conditioning melted away before the assault of evidences of the earth's upheavals, the dazzling varieties in species of flora, fauna--and incidentally, man. Moorehead conveys with spirit Darwin's boundless physical and intellectual energy, but also touches on the enigma of FitzRoy, his bafflement and anger in the face of failure and the pathos of his largely ignored appearance at the famous Oxford "trial" thirty years after the voyage.…