The Book That Changed America: How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation

by Randall Fuller

A compelling portrait of a unique moment in American history when the ideas of Charles Darwin reshaped American notions about nature, religion, science and race

“A lively and informative history.” – The New York Times Book Review

Throughout its history America has been torn in two by debates over ideals and beliefs.  Randall Fuller takes us back to one of those turning points, in 1860, with the story of the influence of Charles Darwin’s just-published On the Origin of Species on five American intellectuals, including Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, the child welfare reformer Charles Loring Brace, and the abolitionist Franklin Sanborn. 
 
Each of these figures seized on the book’s assertion of a common ancestry for all creatures as a powerful argument against slavery, one that helped provide scientific credibility to the cause of abolition.  Darwin’s depiction of constant struggle and endless competition described America on the brink of civil war.  But some had difficulty aligning the new theory to their religious convictions and their faith in a higher power.  Thoreau, perhaps the most profoundly affected all, absorbed Darwin’s views into his mysterious final work on species migration and the interconnectedness of all living things.
 
Creating a rich tableau of nineteenth-century American intellectual culture, as well as providing a fascinating biography of perhaps the single most important idea of that time, The Book That Changed America is also an account of issues and concerns still with us today, including racism and the enduring conflict between science and religion.

Genres: History, Science, Nonfiction, American History, Philosophy, History Of Science, Politics

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 24, 2017

About the author

Randall Fuller is the author of From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature, which won the Phi Beta Kappa’s Christian Gauss Award for best literary criticism, and Emerson’s Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the Chapman Professor of English at the University of Tulsa.

Reviews

[Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars actually. This was a very heavy book , it supposes the reader already has a knowledge of natural selection and it doesn't explain what it is actually about too much, it mostly deals with the repercussions the book had in America , how it engrained itself in the abolition movement, how it could have been used by both pro slavery supporters and abolishers alike. Also time is spent In the repercussions the book had in spiritual America , most people felt that the world Darwin envisioned could not exist , since it robbed humans from being the apex of creation and it likened them to animals , it is no surprise that there were a lot of arguments in that side as we still experience it today . I have a background in anthropologist therefore these notions get familiar to men, but like stated before this book does not do a good job of introducing the theory of natural selection, it feels a little bit drawn out and at some points boring , therefore while it is a very good thing to explore this aspect , (impact of natural selection) in America and thus I was able to enjoy this book, I cannot give it more than 3.5 stars .

[Michael Austin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Book that Changed America should have been a better book than it was. It also should have been a shorter book than it was. If it had been shorter, I think, it would have been better. This is not to say that it is a long book. It is just longer than it needs to be to do everything it needs to do. But it is not nearly long enough to do everything that it tries to do. As a result, it is a compelling thesis buried in a lot of false starts.

The compelling thesis goes like this: When Darwin's book The Origin of Species arrived in America in 1859, it was immediately read in relation to the debate over slavery (because everything in 1859 was read in relation to the debate over slavery). Darwin's theory of natural selection was immediately identified by abolitionists as a rebuttal to the argument that white and black people were a separate species or that God created black people to be slaves. Thus, it gave steam to the abolitionist cause and made a bunch of vaguely defined things happen."

Fair enough. This is probably true. But everything that the author has to say about this fits in about 30 pages. These 30 pages would have made a great article in a collection called something like Darwin in America. But books are where the money is, so a book had to get written. And to do this, the author leads us down several rabbit holes that don't have much to do with Darwin, or evolution, or, changing America.

What they do have a lot to do with is the American Transcendentalists--the group of intellectuals who lived in Boston in the mid 19th century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Emerson and Thoreau occupy an important space in the book, as do Amos Bronson and Louisa May Alcott, Henry Ward Beecher, and a pair of Harvard biologists--Asa Gray, who was an early defender of Darwin, and Louis Agassiz, an early detractor. Supporting characters include Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, PT Barnum, and Frederick Douglass, all of whom may or may not have ever read Darwin but who apparently thought Darwinian things; and both Charles Loring Brace; and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, both who definitely read Darwin and did important anti-slavery things. John Brown is also a character in the book, but he appears mainly as a ghost.

The first half of the book introduces each of these characters and then gives a long biographical sketch of each one, which is, I suppose, a good way to turn something that is not quite long enough to be a book into a book. But it also buries the lede. It is extremely difficult to trace any kind of rhetorical or narrative thread through what are essentially mini-biographies of every famous person who lived in Boston in 1859. the second half of the book gets better, but it includes long digressions of what is essentially literary criticism of works by Thoreau and the younger Alcott, along with a lot of very basic history of slavery and the Civil War.

So, bottom line: this was a great idea for a book that turned into a not-very-good book because the author was struggling to turn an interesting-but-undeveloped thesis and a few unrelated ideas into a book.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating period piece with a very narrow, dramatic focus -- the season after the first copies of Darwin's On the Origen of Species reached the USA, and the circle of prominent thinkers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, including Emerson and Thoreau. Fuller captures the intellectual and social ferment of that highly influential community as it first encountered Darwin's theory. At one dinner party, the transcendentalist philosopher Bronson Alcott explains his own theories which seem to combine the notions of karmic retribution and inherited guilt. He claims that human beings were the first creatures made by God, and all lower creatures had devolved from this original ideal through the corrupting effects of sin. Their increasing depravity was manifested as degenerate bodily forms, which sank to the level of slugs and maggots. Alcott maintained that such disgusting creatures were not part of God’s plan, but a corruption of it: “God could never have created a miserable, poisonous snake, and filthy vermin, and malignant tigers.”

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

GNAB I received a free electronic copy of this history from Netgalley, Randall Fuller, and Penguin Group Viking in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me.

I forget, over time, just how busy the mid-1800s were with new breakthroughs in knowledge and excellent writers bringing their ideas to the world. 1859 and 1860 saw publications by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Henry David Thoreau, John Stewart Mills, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and many others as well as Charles Darwin. Scientists were still called philosophers and medicine was primitive, civil war was pending and John Brown was hanged. Concord was a hotbed of American writers - and it is through them that we measure the impact of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

The Alcott family, The Thoreau's, the Elliots, were all made aware of the Darwin book brought and shared at a dinner party at the Franklin Sanborns' in Concord by Charles Loring Brace. Asa Gray, a professor at Harvard, had received a copy of the book from Charles Darwin and shared it with his cousin by marriage, Brace, who then passed it around in Concord. It's reception was colorful, and varied. The passion with which it was received or denied never faltered, even with the war all around them. And it never stopped. The science might have carried on it's own merit were not religion so ingrained in our society.

And still today, there is often an addendum to the book, stating quite clearly that it is presented as THEORY, not necessarily a fact. A very interesting read, one I will keep and dip into again at my leisure.
Pub date Jan 24, 2017 \Rec Jan 20, 2017

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

America in 1860 was a country on the threshold of war, a land preoccupied with race, the evils of slavery and economic and social tensions between North and South. Then Darwin's Origin of Species crossed the Atlantic. This book traces the influence of Darwin's masterpiece on some of the foremost writers and thinkers in America at the time: the scientists Asa Gray and Louis Agassiz, the great transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and the novelist Louisa May Alcott and her father Bronson. The tension between a designed and a random contingent universe is a theme that gets some attention in this book - particularly in the later chapters - but the other questions that it raised are much more fascinating. How did Darwin's ideas of a materialist universe square with the romantic spiritual nature of the transcendalists? What implications did natural selection have for the debate over the nature and importance of race, including the question of whether the races shared a common ancestry or were separate special creations? What influence did the ideas and language of evolution have on the literature and social thinking of the time? How was it received both by abolitionists and the apologists of chattel slavery?

The answers to these questions are unexpected and fascinating, particularly to a modern reader whose experience and understanding of Darwin's work is bound to be far different than that of an New Englander of the 1860s. The treatment of all of these questions is nuanced and absorbing. The greatest testament to the quality of the writing is probably that, for the first time, I sincerely want to read not only the works of Darwin and Asa Gray, but also the writing of Louisa May Alcott and - most surprising of all, considering how dull I found them in my high school lit class - even revisit the writings of Emerson and Thoreau. I really want to explore the history of ideas that this book introduces so ably.

I received this book as a free giveaway through Goodreads.

[Ameya Warde · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me quite a while to really get into this book. I was confused by the jumping around to mostly unfamiliar names, and found it quite jarring. It lead me to read this really sporatically, which then certainly did not help the confusion! But around 40% through I started reading it more consistantly-- not sure if that's because I got less confused or I was less confused because i wasn't waiting a week between readings, but either way, I read it fairly quickly after that. All in all it was a really interesting glimpse into a slice of Bostonian-ish Intellectual Life as it was affected by the Origin of Species, and I learned a lot about everyone, and American intellectual history as well (To think that people still believed in spontaneous generation during the Civil War!!!! What!!)

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between the execution of John Brown in late 1859 and the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, American intellectuals of the antebellum period were discovering Darwin as copies of The Origin of the Species began to circulate through the United States. Randall Fuller deftly transports us to this era with a novelist's skill for evoking character, but without inventing facts. These characters include some of the usual suspects such as Thoreau, Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, as well as some less familiar figures such as Harvard botanist Asa Gray, the somewhat ineffectual but likable Bronson Alcott (Louisa's father), John Brown supporter Franklin Sanborn, child welfare reformer Charles Loring Brace, and the closest thing this story has to a villain, Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz. There are also cameo appearances by figures as diverse as P. T. Barnum, Frederick Douglas, and Mr. Darwin himself.

With the exception of Thoreau, for whom Darwin primarily influences the course of his botanic research, these intellectuals see Darwinian theory in the context of abolitionism and the relations between the races. They focused on the Darwinian common origin of all man as grounds for rejecting ideas of white racial superiority, and as repudiating any biological basis for the master/slave relationship. Louis Agassiz (who was nevertheless an abolitionist) rejects Darwinism because of conflict with his polygenic (different biological origins for each of the races) theories. Everyone is concerned that there may be no place for God in Darwinian theory, and we see the beginnings of theories of Intelligent Design.

It's all very interesting, but the book doesn't quite live up to its title, The Book that Changed America. There is scant evidence that the concerns regarding Darwinism of this small intellectual elite had much impact on the course of events leading from John Brown's raid to the Emancipation Proclamation. Asa Gray did publish a series of articles on The Origin of the Species in 1860 issues of The Atlantic, but Randall Fuller doesn't tell us much about how these ideas filtered down to the masses or to the political elite in Washington. It's not that Randall Fuller fails; defending the book's title is simply outside the scope of what he has to offer. Perhaps this title was foisted upon him by the publisher to move copies (it's certainly what got me to pick it up off of a stack of ARCs).

All in all, this is essential reading for those interested in American antebellum science and philosophy (two subjects that hadn't fully separated yet). General readers of history should pick it up only if the subject matter looks interesting to them - they won't be disappointed.

[Alicea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most would agree that Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species created a stir among the scientific and religious communities when it was first published (some could argue it's still wreaking havoc to this day). However, in America the hubbub was less about where God fit into the picture and more how Darwin's theory solidified the stance against slavery. The Book That Changed America: How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation by Randall Fuller explores how this one book helped abolitionists build arguments based on scientific fact while at the same time forcing long-held rigid beliefs to be questioned. (I'm looking at you Bronson Alcott.) Until reading this book, I had never thought about its reception in America in terms of its historical context/proximity to the Civil War. These two events seemed to be separate while in reality they were very much interwoven. Leading authors of the day including Henry David Thoreau were well-known and vocal about ending slavery so they not only endorsed Darwin's theories but went on publicity tours to promote it (and give their own opinions). On the Origin of Species showed that all humans had a common ancestor and thus there was no reason why they should not be treated as equals. (The relevance of this book during this time of sociopolitical upheaval in America right now was not lost on me. It just goes to show that we haven't evolved that much since this book hit the shelves.) I was continually surprised by what I learned by reading this book considering that I studied Darwin while I was working on my Bachelor's degree in Anthropology. Instead of solely focusing on the religious impact (which was still significant) it would have been informative to have learned this as well. I suppose that's why Randall Fuller wrote the book! hahaha If you're like me and eager to learn more (especially in light of the insanity that is 2017) then this book is the one for you. 9/10

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent account of the initial impact of Darwin's "Origin Of Species" in America. According to Fuller, this may be one instance in which we know who the first person in the country was to read a given book. In any event, it went hand-to-hand among a few intellectuals bwfore its general publication (in a pirated edition) and began to make itself felt.

It was 1859, the year of John Brown, and Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Franklin Sanborn, Emerson and others were impacted by Darwin's new hypothesis. Asa Gray, a botanist and eventually chief antagonist of the pre-eminent scientist in America, Louis Agassiz (who never accepted evolution), saw in Darwin a solid, scientific argument against the rationalizations of slavery.

Fuller gives us a rich account of these people, their world, and the effects of Darwin's stunning ideas had on America. We can see the lines being drawn in the controversy that has held much of our attention intellectually and theologically since. Highly recommended.,

[Alan Rohwer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book by my interest in Henry Thoreau and the recommendation by a fellow Thoreauvian. I was also drawn to it by my interest in Thoreau’s fellow Concordians of his time, who are featured prominently in the book.

First, as the title implies, Darwin’s theory of evolution enumerated in “The Origin of Species” had a large impact on American thought, far beyond the scientific community. That impact is well described in the book. Besides Darwin, the book introduces us to a group of very interesting characters of the mid-Nineteenth Century. Some I had heard of from my other readings, like the famed American botanist Asa Gray. Gray’s work in summarizing and in many ways defending Darwin’s work was acknowledged by Darwin himself. Another key scientific name that is dealt with is Louis Agassiz, perhaps the most noteworthy critic of Darwin’s theory. As is documented in the book, it was a stimulating time in the development of American thought and many people in that landscape lived in the Concord (Massachusetts) circle. There were names I knew from my own interest in Thoreau. People such as Emerson, Bronson & Louisa May Alcott get ample treatment as do somewhat lesser known characters such as Franklin Sanborn. The implications of “natural selection” theory went well beyond the scientific and into both theology and social science – such as the implications of common species on racial theory used in the validation of the chattel slavery of Negros. This thought strain leads to a discussion of John Brown, his raid on Harpers Ferry and subsequent execution. All this happened at the time when “Origins of the Species” came onto the scene. The implications of that coincidence are dealt with, particularly since the key Concord players were supporters of John Brown and his activities.

All these thought streams (along with many others I didn’t enumerate) left me feeling a little unfocused. Still, I hung in there with the author and made it to the end of the book. One section I found interesting was a story of Louisa May Alcott and her writing techniques. It is typical of some of the asides that the author takes us on. There are also stories of Henry Thoreau and his nature studies and speculations of how Darwin influenced Henry’s already deep interest in natural history. Those sections, of course, were very much to my liking. Although the book is fairly heavily footnoted, and therefore appears researched, there were a few instances where anecdotes about Thoreau bordered on apocryphal, from my other readings.

I would recommend this book to one who has a serious interest in mid-Nineteenth Century scientific and social thought. Be prepared to meet some new and interesting thinkers of that age. Also, be prepared for a pretty serious read crossing a number of subject and discipline boundaries.

[Peter Geyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a particular style of American history writing, and by that I mean Americans writing their own history, that is almost religious or evangelical in tone. By that I mean you get the idea that certain people are exalted beings, particularly if from New England at particular times, and their ideas, even when critiqued, are of a special nature.

Particular names, such as Henry David Thoreau, or Ralph Waldo Emerson (there are many others) are routinely presented on the page in their full glory some dozens of times, in an apparent presumption that the reader knows they have a special status, however little they might know about their ideas. A novelistic approach also ensues with regard to what these and other people are supposed to have said, or written.

To many, this is an acceptable mode of history writing, and Randall Fuller writes well in the general sense, if not to my taste.

The book is in fact about American responses to Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, in the context of what was then a preamble to the American Civil War. This means that there are debates and discussions about special or separate creation of humans, slavery in general, the appearance of Lincoln on the political stage and comparisons with what appears to be a local philosophy of transcedentalism in and around Concord, Massachusetts and the general Boston area. There are other parts of the United States that feature in the discussion, but by and large it is a locally centred event that is being described.

This is a topic of personal interest, and I gained some information. But, as well as what I've written above, I struggled with the characterisations of the several main players of the story. The interpretation of Darwin's ideas appeared to be more Spencerian and aligned with Social Darwinism, which I thought had more to do with the latter than the former, at least from previous reading on that topic. Fuller's writing style makes it unclear whether he is accurately reporting Darwin and his book, or offering an interpretation.

I put this book down several times over a short period, struggling with the language and the particular social focus as well as the speculations on all the characters involved. The book title is mere hyperbole, an exaggeration, but I suppose people are considered to like that kind of thing. There were things to be gained from the text, but they were too few, at least for my kind of historically investigatory reading.

[Victor Chang · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a fascinating insight into the life of New England intellectuals around the time of Charle’s Darwin Origin of Species. During the heyday of Transcendentalism, it demonstrates the inner conflict of people at the time in reconciling evolution and natural selection with the spiritual and religious idea of God. Written in 1860, the Origin of Species also had a huge discourse on one of the greatest conflicts of America, slavery and race. It’s a fascinating tale that gives the reader a window into the thinking and melding of ideas at the time. However, it focuses too much specifically on Concord and a few thinkers that it lacks the opinion on other areas of America like the south. It also spends a bit too many chapters just focused on American history, that it begins to lose sight of how Darwin pertains to the discussion. Overall a good read and a great read if you are interested in local Massachusetts intellectualism and it’s beginnings.

[Melissa Earley · Rating 5 out of 5]

So very fascinating to see how The Origin of Species affected the Abolition movement and influenced so many important writers and philosophers of the day. Emerson, Whitman, Alcott, and perhaps Thoreau most of all.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Förvånansvärt tråkig och babblig, borde kunnat vara intressantare

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The microhistory of transcendentalism was interesting, but far undershot the title of this book.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entering freshmen year of college, my plan A major was Chemistry. If that didn't pan out, History was involved in plan B. Long story short, plan A stuck it out for four years of college, five years of graduate school and a teaching career wrapping up its second decade. The Book That Changed America is a reminder that the space between plans A and B could have been taken more seriously. The college freshmen version of me didn't know it then, but the one sub-genre of science nonfiction I consistently enjoy the most is the history (and philosophy) of science. Author Randall Fuller tells the story of how the single greatest scientific idea anyone ever had, evolution, made its way to and across America starting in late 1859. For America, the story of Darwin's On the Origin of Species is inextricably linked to the years and movements surrounding the Civil War. Because of the link between abolition and the literary world of mid to late-19th century Massachusetts, the impact of Darwin's dangerous idea on the transcendentalist is similarly undeniable. Some readers will come to Fuller's work already knowing the likes of Thoreau and May Alcott. Others will be well versed in the details of Darwin's theory and its early American champion Asa Gray. The Book That Changed America brings these two camps together. Overall, The Book That Changed America is a wonderful telling of the early days of the American history of Darwin's borderless and timeless idea.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been described as “A compelling portrait of a unique moment in American history when the ideas of Charles Darwin reshaped American notions about nature, religion, science and race”. That is an accurate description but the book is so much more.

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED AMERICA – How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation by Randall Fuller

In 1860 Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” and I think it would be fairly safe to assume that he had steeled himself for the backlash that the publication would produce from all parts of society. I’m not quite so sure he was prepared for the support he received or the fact that his book would be used as an argument supporting both sides of the slavery issue in America.

“Reviewers for the American popular press consistently understood Darwin as having provided a theory that showed that black and white people were related. In truth, Darwin had refrained from addressing this issue in the “Origin” because he was unwilling to claim more for his theory than it could adequately answer.”

I found that quite interesting, as I had never come across any information about that particular use of Darwin’s theory before. Of course, that was by no means the only impact his publication had on the world; especially when it concerned religion and science. Botanist Asa Gray was possibly the first person in America to read Darwin’s book and he soon led the charge for acceptance of Darwin’s revolutionary theory. Soon the book was introduced to other members of the scientific, religious and philosophical realms of society: Charles Loring, Franklin Sanborn, Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. In researching this book Mr. Fuller not only tells us the impact the book had on those luminaries but also the influential writers of the time such as Emerson, Lousia May Alcott and Frederick Douglas.

I cannot begin to describe all the areas Mr. Fuller touched upon in this book in a short review, but suffice it say that he packs a lot of interesting information into this 322-page book. I not only learned more about Mr. Darwin’s theory but also enjoyed the biographical aspects about the others spotlighted.

It’s difficult to imagine one book filled with one man’s ideas could change the thinking of an entire country, but after reading Mr. Fuller’s book I can certainly see how it happened. Well researched and well written but more importantly it satisfied the curiosity that prompted me to pick it up and I can’t ask more than that, so five stars for this one.

[Tom Kress · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very taken in by the premise of this book, hoping to gain insight into the impact of Darwin's work on the US, but instead the book weaved together the life stories of various New England abolitionists. The first 2/3 of the book kept the idea of natural selection and Origin itself at its heart, but the last third of the book instead focused on the lives of Emerson, the Alcotts, Thoreau and Franklin Sanborn. The author attempted to argue that the historical figures were marked by the very struggle that Darwin championed, that survival drives evolution and also drove the growth and change of these luminaries of antebellum Massachusetts. My issue with the story is that I don't feel what filled the pages matched what was on the cover, or put another way, the title of the book and the book don't quite line up.

[Phoebe]

I gave up with this one. I made it about 80% through, but it just turned out to be less interesting than I'd hoped. I was looking for more wider social context and reactions to Darwin - what were everyday people thinking? How soon did the idea that evolution was ungodly take widespread hold? - instead I got far too much of the mind of Bronson Alcott, verging on Great White Men of History. Perhaps it was the context of reading; the reader, though possessed of a pleasant, sonorous voice, also spoke with that undefineable quality of classical music station radio announcers that causes the most important part of what they say to immediately leave my brain as soon as they've said it. I gave up.

[James Biser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an fascinating historic sketch of what happened in America when Darwin's Origin of Species came to the country. His ideas made a huge difference in the minds of the Americans as they waded into the Civil War. The ideas of evolution and race made a huge impact in the minds of literary, scientific, and political minds.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! A detailed account of the first months of -Origin of Species- reception in the US, and the reasons behind why it continues as such a watershed text across so many fields. Well written, compelling.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the many programs celebrating the 200th anniversary of H. Thoreau birth led me to this book. The book is a comprehensive study of the impact of the book in the US, but Thoreau despite dying young (TB) and only a couple years after the Origin of the Species was published and reached the US, was an early convert and supporter. The book was being debated the same time the Union was dissolving and people were debating the status and future of the negro in the US. Key characters in the story:
ABA: Amos Bronson Alcott
LMA: Louisa May Alcott
CLB: Charles Loring Brace
CD: Charles Darwin
RWE: Ralph Waldo Emerson
AG: Asa Gray
FBS: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
HDT: Henry David Thoreau

The story is (for me) a wonderful intersection of science, history, abolitionists, racism, philosophy (Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, etc try to reconcile their Transcendentalism w/ Evolution - but it doesn't work. HDT understands it's a new world; the others don't).

Another review:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/20...
============ my notes =========
p.
60 Emerson, Alcott w/ belief in devine, march towards perfection, spirituality, unable to come to grips w/ evolution, 'science', reality
63 Henry David Thoreau (HT), 42 years old, read OoS,; 4 hr daily walks collecting natural artifacts, making observations
66 HT, transcendentalist, worried about American materialism; Enormous changes in US:
- pop. growth, camera, telegraph, RR, cotton gin;
67 role of Waltham and Lowell cotton textile mills - slavery, young women and children working, exploited in mill
68 'you dare not make a war on king cotton' so said gov. SC, 1858; Emerson didn't embrace abolitionists at lst.
70 HT speaks out in favor of J. Brown despite danger
72 HT reads Voy. of Beagle
73 HT's notebook is one of a scientist
74 HT has a personal Nat. Hist. Museum in his attic
75 HT reads OotS, 1860 (is transformed)
84 Agassiz (Harvard): God is the creator; no change; multiple races
88 Gray has trouble w/ A views
89 Bible says we all descended from A&E (thus 1 race)
90 Caldwell has racist theories
92 F. Douglas challenges the racist scientists
95 Darwin Theory - 2 edged sword - common origin for all races, but also link to non-humans (for racists). FD seemed to reject Dism b/c of the possible racism
97 PT Barnum was big collector. HT visited his NY museum 3x's
101 1860 (microcephaly negro) 'exhibit', [missing link], William Johnson, a bit hit. Johnson b/c a wealthy man acting out the role
105 D saw slavery lst hand in Brazil (brutal)
107 Atl Monthly articles about D read by E. Dickenson
113 Agassiz has visceral dislike for negros
114 Asa Gray is able proponent of D
131 Language also displays a 'tree' showing common ancestors
133 Brace & Phillips anti-slave. Brace believes man/life is 'progressing' thru evolut.
141 T enthralled w/ D. methods & conclusions
145 T, 1860, after reading OotS begins extracting data from his earlier journals
146 and creates 'spreadsheets', rows,columns of data
152 Bronson Alcott's inverted idea of Ev is too goofy even for A
153 T apple lecture shows D influence
167 Concordians save Sanborn from arrest for his abolitionist speeches. Segregationists quite dangerous and powerful influence even in northern states
173 J Brown's daughter @ Sanborn Concord Acadamy.
180 L. Alcott writes Moods novel w/ traces of slavery, N-S conflict, Dism, in it
183 1860 Lincoln Rep. candidate, is elected b/c Dems N/S split. Union is fractured over slavery.
Emerson: "america's emph. on the self was divisive & unproductive" However his Fruitlands experimental utopian comm. had failed 20 yrs earlier
188 B. Alcott & others could not conceive of a world of only material. "must be a God who provides beauty, meaning'
194 T: Succession of Forest Trees includes D. theory & wonderment of nature
202 Brace grapples w/ negro question: assimilate or segregate (eg colonize back to Africa)
206 Huxley debates Wilburforce in Eng. Agassiz vs Gray in US
208 Norton poses that the lst life form is still unexplained as well as specialness of humans by D theory
212 Gray is having problems reconcil. God and Intell design with D. And in letters, D can't help him
220 Lincoln pres. w/o majority vote. J. Brown caused Dems to split giving L the pres.
221 A.R. Wallace, 1864 book counters D & says all races are equal. W had studied primitive groups. W remembered for many things: independently arrives at evolution theory; supports D.; believes in spiritualism (as did many others)
222 W still believed in a higher order to explain humans and the origin of (lst) life form.
227 Some are using D to justify inequality and societal rank

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book -- which doesn't sound like a title an author would give it -- way overstates the situation, and it sets an expectation that can't be met. It's a remarkable coincidence that Darwin's revolutionary ideas came to America just at the time the nation was nearing the breach of the Civil War, but the author doesn't come close to backing up the point he states repeatedly that the book "changed" America. Instead, it's pretty clear that the books ideas were absorbed into the ferment of arguments about slavery that had been heating up for nearly 50 years, and that proponents and opponents of slavery adapted the book's ideas to meet their goals. The book didn't change or ignite America, but rather America's passions infused the book's ideas with new directions.

My interpretation doesn't make this book less interesting, just less substantial. I think the author's explanations of the key philosophies of the time (1850s-1860s) are interesting, and I always appreciate someone explaining transcendentalism (I'll never quite understand it) and Thoreau (very clear-headed coverage of him here). So many famous names of the period get their due, Emerson, John Brown, Louisa May Alcott. And also those forgotten, such as Benjamin Franklin Sanborn (that guy had an amazing life!). It's interesting how the thinking of these people can be traced through their diaries, showing how they accepted and wrestled with Darwin's idea that pure chance guides variations in species, but then those characteristics which help that species adapt better to its conditions tend to win out over time. For a nation so steeped in religiousity, it's remarkable how many people accepted most of Darwin's ideas fairly quickly.

As noted above, I don't see how Darwin's ideas are especially important to the debate about slavery and the Civil War. All the arguments about equality of man were already on the table before Darwin, both in terms of morality and obvious facts, such as that free Blacks were able to live in northern cities. So even as Darwin brought further evidence that all man is related, this didn't move the needle on the overall attitude in the US. And Darwin's deeper implication that all living things are related -- plants, bacteria, animals, man -- wasn't accepted by most people for a long time, so it had no bearing on the Civil War either. Yet it's interesting that the idea of a common ancestor was another building block for abolitionists.

Perhaps more interesting are the limitations under which most abolitionists still labored. They thought that there was a Divine Creator, and either He was watching to make the world reach "higher" orders, or the natural selection that Darwin theorized was moving in that same obvious direction. But they also assumed that white people were higher on that developmental scale than Black people, just like they assumed man is higher than animals. And so while they wanted to free slaves, they didn't believe that most of those former slaves or any Black person could live equally in white society. And some of them shared the same issue with Southerners -- that having Blacks and whites living in proximity would result in a mixing of the races. The author of this book does a great job of bringing out these contradictions and explaining how the blinkered views of even ardent abolitionists led them to accept only part of Darwin's ideas. And in the saddest moment in this book, he explains that a few of these brave, forward-thinking abolitionists simply didn't care about what happened to slaves after they were freed. They felt they had done their duty to their fellow man, and anything after that would take care of itself. And thus we had thwarted Reconstruction, Jim Crow, etc., for nearly 100 more years.

One final thing. I picked up this book at a college used bookstore, and there's a note inside indicating it was assigned to all freshman at the college for a general seminar class. I think it's great that colleges do that type of class now (liberal arts colleges) and force students to think big thoughts. But this book wasn't a great choice. It's not well-written, and it's obscure in parts, though I guess the professor would clarify those points during lectures and discussions. But I feel like students should enjoy a seminar book, and this one is kind of clunky and definitely will antagonize poor readers. The fact that it has dumb mistakes (one part refers to a guy who lectured for "thirty decades" rather than thirty years or three decades) weakens it further.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Randall Fuller's readable book on the Concord reception of Darwin's On the Origin of Species goes back over territory first interpreted in the Thirties by the Harvard Americanists, a historiography culminating in Richard Hofstadter's 1944 Social Darwinism in American Thought. Hofstadter's book was significantly supplemented ten years later by Perry Miller's American Thought: Civil War to World War 1. By now the debates over high/low, scientific disenchantment and re-enchantment, had been fully joined in the University at large, indeed they were a staple of my liberal arts education in the early Eighties. Louis Menand endeavored a revanche on this secular sanctum sanctorum in his 2001 popular history of the Cambridge Metaphysical Club, while ten years further on, George Levine followed up in The Joys of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now, so similar in its appeal to the Miller 1954 volume.

Any Americanist worth her/his salt knows this stuff never goes out of style. Randall Fuller opens on a Concord dinner party that occurs on January 1, 1860, a month or so after the English publication of Darwin's epochal text. Bronson Alcott, Charles Loring Brace, Franklin Sanborn, Asa Gray and Henry David Thoreau are the guests. What Fuller is working on here, I think, is the high/low cultural politics coming out of the debates around race amalgamation, the popularizations of Darwin in botched and racist ethnology, some of which was partly based on mis-construals of what Darwin was arguing; and the way, in the sentimental culture of Abolitionist New England, mythological patterns of national innocence give way to realistic premises of Romance, for example, in Thoreau's thumos or spirited Nature. This desert-island dinner guest-roster is offered as a snapshot of the American uses of On the Origin.

The bother is that Fuller skips over entirely the ablest of the American Darwin interpreters, Chauncey Wright, in a sense substituting -- since Thoreau's response to Darwin is fledged in the single essay Fuller reads, "The Succession of Forest Trees" -- someone whose response to Darwin was stunted (Thoreau finished fewer than a handful essays during the brief seasons he coped with his final illness) for someone whose work in the highest sense might be described as Darwinian. My sneaky suspicion is that Fuller does this because Thoreau's reach into American life transcends the high culture of Cambridge, where Wright remains an obscure figure. (Fuller brings attention to the Harvard naturalist Asa Gray, but only to show that Gray himself lost his nerve in defending Darwin.) But the issue of high Brahmin culture remains, crucial to all the personal, anamnestic activism that comes later, first in the lead-up to the first World War, and then later during the Acid-tingd Third Great Awakening.

[Æ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to start reading books about how scientific discoveries affected the wider world. Initially I was looking for a book about the discovery of dinosaurs and its impacts, but haven’t nailed down which one to get. If you have a recommendation that covers dinosaurs or anything else, let me know!

This book is about how Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” affected the lives of people in mid-1800’s America, pre-civil war, post-John Brown’s death. It follows the lives of various notable people and how the release of this book affected then and their surroundings.

This was before Science and Scientists existed as we understand them today. Western societies of the time asserted that “science was nothing less than the study of God’s creation.” Darwin helped cleave science from religion & transcendentalism by dismantling the biblical idea of creation, helping push society toward a more materialist, agnostic, and rational science. One more capable of questioning religious dogma.

You can see even then the 3 categories of responses from people back then:
• Outright denial and demonization of such blasphemy
• Acceptance/intrigue and leaning toward agnosticism
• And my favorite retort: God of the Gaps. Accepting the theory and filling in the things it doesn’t sufficiently cover (the origin of life itself, the complexities of the human eye, the evolution of consciousness, etc.) with “God did it” or that “natural selection is a mechanism employed by God”. We see this today too, and those gaps get smaller and smaller as science advances.

The book was also released in one of the most turbulent times of US History: 1860. John Brown had just been murdered by the state for fighting to end slavery, and the Civil War was incoming. Here comes a book that shatters the “race science”/“scientific racism”/polygeny (white supremacy masquerading as science) by (indirectly) saying all human beings are human beings and that other races aren’t some ‘inferior species’. It was a powerful notion ~160 years ago. And the notion still hasn’t won out against individual or societal racism completely. (Read "The History of White People" by Nell Irvin Painter, 2010 for more about this topic)

Darwin wasn’t right about everything. He was a product of his time, holding racist, colonialist views like believing primitive peoples represented a missing link between primates and humans. His theory ***evolved*** with the help of other scientists. After the civil war, the theory was bastardized to assert that black people were inferior and white folk were better adapted to survive. This was justification to pass “anti-miscegenation” laws, outlawing interracial marriage.
I wish this book focused more on the society as a whole and less on the collection of mini-biographies of the individuals affected by Darwin. Other than that, it was pretty good.

[Terry Pitts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species landed in the hands of select American readers in 1860, just after the failed raid at Harper's Ferry and the execution of John Brown and just ahead of the Presidential election which would bring Abraham Lincoln to the White House with only 40% of the popular vote (he wasn't even on the ballots of ten southern states). Randall Fuller, a professor of 19th century American literature, focuses his story largely on the circle of luminaries in and around Concord, Massachusetts which included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louis May Alcott and her father Bronson Alcott, the abolitionist Franklin Sanborn (one of the men who financed the Harper's Ferry raid), Harvard botanist Asa Gray, philanthropist Charles Loring Brace, and others, who pondered, discussed, argued over, lectured about and annotated copies of Darwin's book.

In addition to its role in unsettling (if not obliterating) the relationship between religion and science, On the Origin of Species also played into the thinking of America's abolitionists, providing them with arguments that all humans possibly descended from a single source. If the races weren't inherently different, then many of the pseudo-scientific arguments put forward by slave owners were invalid.

Fuller demonstrates that it was Thoreau who most deeply absorbed and understood the many scientific messages in Darwin's book and who, because of his own years of observations, experiments, and careful notes, came closest of all of his Concord colleagues to actually seeing Darwin's theory in practice.

The title might be somewhat overblown, but this is an otherwise absorbing, well-written book.

[Mishehu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. But I understand some of the criticism others have leveled. The 'book that changed America'? A lot of the story (Scopes/Monkey trial, the endless wars over public school science curricula that reverberate to the present, etc.) are completely omitted from this history. Granted, the book focuses on the initial reception of Darwin's treatise in America. Even so, the book in fact focuses even more narrowly on only a handful of key thinkers of the age: a few public intellectuals with varying professional backgrounds, all living in the greater Boston area. Unless one is to accept the premise (never explicitly stated in the book but implicit throughout) that 'as blew the intellectual/philosophical winds in Boston, so blew they in the nation at large', then it's hard to know, reading this book, whether Origins had any impact at all elsewhere in the Republic in the first years after its publication.

Fuller also makes too much of one particular claim that he draws out at length: that the Origins had a direct impact on the anti-slavery abolition movement and the Civil War that was, in many ways, its culmination. While this may be true, Fuller does not do a convincing job of establishing the fact. Both the movement and the war had deep roots long predating anyone's exposure to the specific ideas of scientific or social Darwinism.

As a modest chapter in social history, political history, and history of science, The Book that Changed America is a fine read. But I fault the author and/or his publisher for larding this book with a misleadingly grandiose title. This book is decidedly not the story of Origin's impact on America. It is, nonetheless, a very interesting book.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Randell Fuller is a professor of English Literature at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. In 2017, Randell Fuller published The Book That Changed America: How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation. The book examines how Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species influenced the intellectual landscape of the United States, specifically in Boston, Massachusetts, until after the Civil War (Fuller 29). I read the book on the Kindle. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species reached New England during the aftermath of “John Brown’s attack on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry” in Virginia (Fuller 6). The book is focused on how Transcendentalists in New England responded to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The Transcendentalists' response to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was influenced by the aftermath of John Brown’s attack (Fuller 6). Fuller writes that “Transcendentalism had emerged in the mid-1830s as an intoxicating set of philosophical, literary, and spiritual tendencies unified by discontent with American life” (Fuller 53). Fuller writes that “chief among the loose coalition of intellectuals was Ralph Waldo Emerson” (Fuller 53). Fuller feels that Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and the Civil War led the cultural history of the United States away from Transcendentalism into other directions. The book is also about how Darwin’s On the Origin of Species influenced the buildup to the Civil War. The book has a section of notes, “selected bibliography” (Fuller 277-284), and an index. The book has a large cast of historical characters. Fuller’s The Book That Changed America is a readable book.

[Ryan McCloskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not what I had expected! When I borrowed it, I expected a higher-level survey of various attitudes across America, and a longer term evaluation of its impact on American religious thought (largely because the original recommender was a scholar of religion). But I found its focus on the tight knit community of Concord, MA--and it's personal narrative via the network of names living in that town--to be a wonderful vehicle to show how the Darwin's thoughts crossed the Atlantic and the stirring effect it had on the New England's intelligentsia. It taught me a bit about some looming literary figures that I had not studied before, and contextualized theory of evolution within the wider array of revolutionary social thought happening in New England at the time (esp abolition and the role of Concord's elite in its advocacy). I particularly loved the Thoreau narrative, and the exploration of how "On the Origin of Species" pushed Thoreau to syncretize scientific thought/practice with his more spiritual exploits in nature. Another set of highlights were the book's exploration of generational differences in Darwin's reception, and his juxtaposition of the books evangelists against its detractors amongst Harvard's faculty. Though it wasn't what I expected when I picked it up, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the early American impact of Darwin's theory and the high-society communities that were affected by it.

[Odile · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reviews the reactions of American authors, philosophers and local leaders to the Darwin book "On the Origins of Species". The selected Americans are mostly from the Boston/Concord MA area and include Thoreau, Emerson, Louisa Alcott and others. It takes us into the details of their lives and describes the social atmosphere, thinking, events and challenges of the area. The author is an academic and has a deep knowledge of the era he talks about these people like people he knows well (and I don't!).
The impact of the Darwin evolution theory was quite important in this circle of intellectuals. It was used to justify slavery (we are in 1860 at the eve of the civil war) or to combat it. It was rejected based on religion. It was also the basis of some very preliminary eugenics thinking, at least a mellow form of it.
Like many impactful scientific theory, the name of a man, Darwin here, is associated to it as he somehow cristallizes the thinking and discoveries of his era to articulate a theory such that you cannot help thinking that if it hadn't been Darwin, somebody else would have come up with it as it reflected very much the thinking of the era. Darwin still deserves all the credit for the extensive experiments and explorations he undertook to support his theory.
It is not an easy read but an interesting slice of history.