The Evolution of Charles Darwin: The Epic Voyage of the Beagle That Forever Changed Our View of Life on Earth

From the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning historian, the colorful, dramatic story of Charles Darwin's journey on HMS Beagle that inspired the evolutionary theories in his path-breaking books On the Origin of Species and The Descent of ManWhen twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles--invited by ship's captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship's naturalist--he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history. Nonetheless, over the course of the five-year journey around the globe in often hard and hazardous conditions, Darwin would make observations and gather samples that would form the basis of his revolutionary theories about the origin of species and natural selection.Drawing on a rich range of revealing letters, diary entries, recollections of those who encountered him, and Darwin's and FitzRoy's own accounts of what transpired, Diana Preston chronicles the epic voyage as it unfolded, tracing Darwin's growth from untested young man to accomplished adventurer and natural scientist in his own right. Darwin often left the ship to climb mountains, navigate rivers, or ride hundreds of miles, accompanied by local guides whose languages he barely understood, across pampas and through rainforests in search of further unique specimens. From the wilds of Patagonia to the Galápagos and other Atlantic and Pacific islands, as Preston vibrantly relates, Darwin collected and contrasted volcanic rocks and fossils large and small, witnessed an earthquake, and encountered the Argentinian rhea, Falklands fox, and Galápagos finch, through which he began to discern connections between deep past and present.Darwin never left Britain again after his return in 1836, though his mind journeyed far and wide to develop the theories that were first revealed, after great delay and with trepidation about their reception, in 1859 with the publication of his epochal book On the Origin of Species. Offering a unique portrait of one of history's most consequential figures, The Evolution of Charles Darwin is a vital contribution to our understanding of life on Earth.

ISBN-13: 9780802160188

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic - Inc.

Publication Date: 10-04-2022

Pages: 448

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.70(d)

DIANA PRESTON is a prize-winning historian and the author of Eight Days at Yalta, A Higher Form of Killing, Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy, Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology), The Boxer Rebellion, Paradise in Chains, and A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, among other works of acclaimed narrative history. She and her husband, Michael, live in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 Prelude

Chapter 1 The Selection of Darwin 9

Chapter 2 "A Birthday for the Rest of My Life" 26

Part 2 The Voyage of the Beagle

Chapter 3 "Like Giving a Blind Man Eyes" 45

Chapter 4 "Red-Hot with Spiders" 66

Chapter 5 "Gigantic Land Animals" 88

Chapter 6 Land of Fire 110

Chapter 7 "Truly Savage Inhabitants" 123

Chapter 8 Res Nullius 135

Chapter 9 El Naturalista Don Carlos 154

Chapter 10 "Great Monsters" 170

Chapter 11 The Furies 186

Chapter 12 "The Very Highest Pleasures" 203

Chapter 13 "Skating on Very Thin Ice" 224

Chapter 14 "Eternal Rambling" 244

Chapter 15 The Enchanted Islands 257

Chapter 16 Aphrodite's Island 270

Chapter 17 "Not a Pleasant Place" 282

Chapter 18 "A Rising Infant" 291

Chapter 19 "Myriads of Tiny Architects" 305

Chapter 20 "A Great Name among the Naturalists of Europe" 315

Part 3 After the Beagle

Chapter 21 "A Peacock Admiring His Tail" 329

Chapter 22 "It Is Like Confessing a Murder" 348

Chapter 23 "Most Hasty and Extraordinary Things" 369

Chapter 24 "I Shall Be Forestalled" 382

Chapter 25 Natural Selection 399

Chapter 26 "The Clerk of the Weather" 410

Chapter 27 "All Soon to Go" 418

Darwin's Legacy 427

Postscript "Weep for Patagonia" 435

Acknowledgments 445

Notes and Sources 449

Bibliography 475

Image Credits 481

Index 485

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