The story of Charles Darwin and his wondrous, scary idea -the idea of "natural selection" as the main mechanism of evolution- is one of the most exciting in the history o science. Yet twenty-one years passed between Darwin's conception of this idea and his publication of The Origin of Species. In The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, David Quammen draws on Darwin's secret "transmutation" notebooks and private letter to create a meticulous, humane portrait of the man, and a lucid explication of his work, that captures both the personal foibles and the scientific substance.

On a topic that sounds like it will be dry as dust, author David Quammen delivers an engrossing tale of an all-too human Darwin and the circumstances--both personal and professional--that stretched over the many years between his initial inklings of his great theory and its eventual publication in The Origin of Species. In addition to this main story, we get the history of philosophies and scientific thought on what would eventually be labeled "evolution" and "natural selection." I was particularly fascinated by this history and its relationship to ideas being promulgated today as "Intelligent Design" and "creationism". ( )

Muscular and amusing prose surround thorough, subtle research. Worth it for the chapter-by-chapter Origin. ( )

Twenty-one years passed between Charles Darwin's epiphany that "natural selection" formed the basis of evolution and the scientist's publication of On the Origin of Species. Why did Darwin delay, and what happened during the course of those two decades? The human drama and scientific basis of these years constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that elucidates the character of a cautious naturalist who initiated an intellectual revolution. ( )

"[...]nobody's perfect. Charles Darwin certainly wasn't. He had an appendix, he had nipples, none of which served any useful purpose, and he occasionally made mistakes, even in The Origin of Species."

It is really hard for me to find nonfiction books that I end up liking. They are always either too dry or too lacking in substance and pandering to a current popular interest. However, this book is pretty great. It brings Darwin out in the open as a full human being and reveals the decades of work, dedication to precision, and objectiveness that went into the germ of evolutionary theory.

Darwin didn't set out on the Beagle to start a revolution in science that led to its complete divergence from religion. He was just a lad from a wealthy family on a natural history expedition. But the carcasses and their locations couldn't lie. With some of the eventual evidence collected, he formed a hypothesis and worked on perfecting it for decades before publishing. Only the danger of having his idea owned by someone else first led him to stop hoarding and digesting evidence and get down to the writing. During all of the gestation time he sired a family, coped with a mysterious illness by bizarre water treatments, and lost his faith in God.

This book made me want to read other books by Quammen because he writes with clarity and literary backbone missing from some other nonfiction writers. ( )