How to Read Darwin

Intent on letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon.

Charles Darwin’s permanent legacy is his broad, abstract theories of evolution and natural selection, theories that he tested against an astonishing array of natural history evidence in his writing. Mark Ridley uses a question-and-answer approach to explain how Darwin carefully tackled problems, and shows here how the reader can understand Darwin’s arguments by first working out which question Darwin had implicitly set himself to answer.

Ridley concentrates on understanding Darwin’s most important books, On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, but he also examines a sample from one of Darwin’s other works on the emotions, as one representative from Darwin’s lesser-known works that ranged from flower pollination to coral reefs, from animal domestication to landscaping by earthworms.

Mark Ridley works in the Department of Zoology, Oxford University. He previously held posts at Emory University in Atlanta and at Cambridge University in England. His books include the standard college text Evolution and Mendel’s Demon. He has also edited anthologies on Evolution and A Darwin Selection.

Simon Critchley is a best-selling author and the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. His many books include The Book of Dead Philosophers, Bowie, and Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us.