Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist

A biography of the naturalist disputes misconceptions, including Darwin's status as a true scientist, discussing how Darwin concealed his theory of evolution for twenty years, agonizing over its implications and the impact it would have on his social standing.

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.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A sweeping biography in which Desmond (The Ape's Reflexion, 1979, etc.) and Moore (The Post-Darwinian Controversies--not reviewed) illustrate not only the familiar Darwinian thesis that life evolves--that it depends on an interplay of nature and culture and of inherited and acquired traits--but also the contemporary thesis that all science is in some way autobiographical. On a personal level, the authors say, Darwin developed from a pleasure-loving descendant of doctors and industrialists into an adventurer who undertook a five-year voyage around the world, and then into a recluse, a mad scientist racked by a mysterious illness, possibly psychogenic in origin, ruefully observing in his ten children the weaknesses he believed they had inherited by his marrying his first cousin. Professionally, Darwin was an observer and collector, interested in geology and zoology, famous in his own day for his tireless study of barnacles, worm castings, and pigeons, reluctant to theorize or to affirm the principles of evolution that had been evident to his grandfather Erasmus and were confirmed by most of the scientific community. Placing Darwin in context, Desmond and Moore demonstrate how social and political forces (the role of Malthus, the political radicals associated with the Westminster Review) contributed to his reading of nature. They also show Darwin participating in the professionalization of science, which developed from a collection of pious, wealthy gentlemen amateurs into various specialized and secularized disciplines with their own hierarchies and competition. Longer and more wide-ranging than John Bowlby's Charles Darwin (1991), this neglects Darwin's major strength: his own powerful, vivid, and imaginative prose. While valuable for the insights it offers on the age, it is not a substitute for Darwin's own autobiography and journals. (Fifty-six pages of photographs and drawings--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 44 chapters with copious notes and massive details, Darwin scholars Desmond and Moore give a rich portrait of the gentleman naturalist and scientific theorist from a sociocultural framework emphasizing Whig-Tory conflicts and Lyellian-Malthusian speculations. The authors reveal that Darwin was particularly influenced by the evolutionary ideas of zoologist Robert Grant; the implications of fossil Argentine megatheriums, speciated Galapagos mockingbirds, and the incredible varieties of barnacles; as well as experimentation with cultivated plants and animals. Despite a doting wife, loyal friends, and belated honors (though he was never knighted), Darwin's life was filled with illness, disappointment, and tragedy (especially the death of daughter Annie at age ten). This impressive volume makes clear that Darwin suffered from a lifelong schizoid struggle between his own materialist science and a late-Victorian theology. For a deeper examination of Darwin's sickness, read John Bowlby's Charles Darwin ( LJ 3/1/91) and Ralph Colp's To Be an Invalid ( LJ 6/1/77). Darwin's final written thoughts on religion are found in Nora Barlow's indispensable The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1959). Essential reading for evolutionists, Desmond and Moore's monumental work is highly recommended for all academic libraries. BOMC, History Book Club, and Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selections.
- H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.