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Creation: The True Story of Charles Darwin
Annie was Charles and Emma Darwin's adored first daughter. Her death at the age of ten broke their hearts. At the time, Darwin was working secretly on his theory of evolution, and the pain of his daughter's death sharpened his conviction that natural laws have nothing to do with divine intervention. But he became racked with anxiety about his ground-breaking theories in The Origin of Species, and the controversy they would cause.
As Darwin's theories continue to shape so much of our thinking about human nature today, Creation gives us fresh insight into the private life of a man who viewed the world in a new and extraordinary way.
The film Creation is based on Randal Keynes' book, originally published as Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, his Daughter and Human Evolution.
As Darwin's theories continue to shape so much of our thinking about human nature today, Creation gives us fresh insight into the private life of a man who viewed the world in a new and extraordinary way.
The film Creation is based on Randal Keynes' book, originally published as Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, his Daughter and Human Evolution.
350 pages, Paperback
First published November 25, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
May 2, 2021
Just like many at Facebook who greet their dead “Happy Birthday in Heaven!” Charles Darwin could easily have lived and died in the religion he was born and raised, believing in God, heaven, the soul and the afterlife (they were Unitarians—basically believers in the God of the scriptures minus the Holy Trinity). So when his most beloved daughter Annie passed away at the tender age of ten, from a horrible disease not yet understood at that time (tuberculosis), a death which scarred him and his wife Emma for life, and the sorrow of which he carried until he himself died aged 73, he could have also had the consolation of the thought that his poor daughter had gone to a better place, Heaven, and is now a sweet angel as she had been a sweet child of his, and that one day they will meet again.
But Charles Darwin, an upright, kind man with no mean bone in his body, a sure candidate for sainthood had he been a Roman Catholic, was a man of Science. Aside from his family (a very large brood) the thing which consumed his time was the observance and study of the natural world: the land formations, the seas, their inhabitants great and lowly (he even studied worms, insects and clinging plant vines), those still with us and those which had gone extinct. And from his systematic and meticulous study he had realised that we live in a violent, vicious, whimsical and cruel world and that as human beings we share the lowly beginnings and common fate of all the other living things—that we are not special.
These, he found to be incompatible with the concept of an all-good, all merciful God of his religion who supposedly created all that there is. With religion, based on tales and ancient stories bereft of evidence, one could probably get away with human beings’ cruelty to their fellowmen. For those who do evil supposedly will get their comeuppance when they die, as they will be fried in hell for eternity; while their victims’ tears will be dried in heaven where they shall enjoy eternal bliss.
But what of the other animals like us? A buffalo dies in anguish while being feasted on by a pack of lions, its flesh being carved out of its body while still alive. A mother cat is strangled to death and slowly swallowed whole by a snake while her litter watch helplessly and perhaps eaten too or abandoned to die without their mother. Entire populations perishing in a famine or other natural calamities like volcanic eruptions, forest fires or floods. It has been pointed out that 99.99% (almost 100%!) of all the species that had ever lived had now become extinct. Extinction, indeed, for all living things, is the norm; survival only being a very rare exception. Even right now extinction of many species is ongoing. In a distant future, our planet itself will die a cosmic death and unless we, as a specie, manage to transplant ourselves to another galaxy, we would also go the way of the dinosaurs.
Is there a meaning, however, to human suffering? Emma, Charles Darwin’s wife, thought there is a moral purpose to it—“to help us exalt our minds,” she said. But Charles said that even if human suffering has a moral purpose (though merely assumed, without evidence), suffering definitely has no moral purpose for other creatures—
“‘The number of men in the world is as nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral improvement,’Charles wrote with sudden vehemence, ‘It revolts our understanding’ to suppose that God denied his benevolence to animals. ‘What advantage can there be in the sufferings of the millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time?’
“Charles acknowledged that the argument was a very old one, but felt it was strong. David Hume had put the point in his ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.’ His character Philo said: ‘Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is I’mpotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?’ Phil had also anticipated Charles’s concern about the natural world. ‘Look around this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.’
“Charles’s final suggestion on the matter returned to his starting point. While the incidence of pain throughout natural life could not be reconciled with any claim that God was universally benevolent, ‘such suffering is quite compatible with the belief in Natural Selection, which is not perfect in its action, but tends only to render each species as successful as possible in the battle for life with other species, in wonderfully complex and changing circumstances.’
“He came back also to an underlying question—in a sense the most radical of all those that he asked himself—whether humans could hope ever to understand these deepest issues. David Hume had suggested in his ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’ that we might believe the wordld to have been created by a being with intelligence and a purpose simply because that happens to be how we as humans act and understand each other’s actions. This might then be another ‘anthropomorphic’ guess, like our presumption that animals had human feelings. Spiders, on the other hand, might believe that an ‘infinite spider’ had spun the world from his bowels. ‘Why an orderly system may not be spun from the belly as well as from the brain, it will be difficult…to give a satisfactory reason.’ Charles had felt in the 1860s that the issue of order in the natural world was ‘too profound for the human intellect,’ and ‘a dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.’ He now took up Hume’s radical concern; he cast it in his own terms of human descent from animal origins, and applied it to the fundamental issue. ‘Can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience?’”
This is a world full of misery and death. Something theologians during Charles’s time found difficulty in reconciling with the supposedly good and benevolent Creator. He believed, however, that he had found part of the answer to this seeming mystery: cruelty and pain were not a moral issue because they were the outcome of purely natural process. ‘Man acts on and is acted on by the organic and inorganic agents of this earth, like every other animal,’ he wrote in 1839. This idea, very controversial at that time, is not easy to dismiss. For it stands the test of experience. Take the case of pandemics. During the mid 14th century when there was more faith in god than science Europe, Eurasia and North Africa were visited by the so-called Black Death or the Bubonic Plague. All sorts of propitiations, prayers and succour to gods, saints, heaven and all that is holy were made but to no avail. An estimated 75 MILLION to 200 MILLION people perished. There were instances where homes and entire towns and villages were completely decimated, all inhabitants thereof claimed by the Grim Reaper. It was a time when Nature just did what it does which, to one with moral inclinations, would appear to be senseless or brutal when, in fact, there was really nothing senseless or brutal with what nature does. It was just the way things were.
During the Black Death there were even two cities which fought over the relics of a saint who was believed to have strong intercessory powers to convince God to spare a place from pestilences. Both wanted to have the relics with them so they can use them during religious processions and public prayers. One of these cities indeed got the relics yet it was not spared from the plague at all. There were also roving flagellants during that time who believed that prayers and self-sacrifice could appease an angry god. Then imagine the incessant, heartfelt and sincere prayers: parents praying over their sick children; children praying for their dying parents; entire families huddled in their homes, dying one-by-one praying and crying, hearing the wailings and sobbing of their neighbours followed by eerie silence after they’d all expired. But heaven just watched unperturbed.
But had Nature been some kind of an intelligent being it could have just been watching those praying victims of the plague and perhaps silently muttering: “It is not praying to the gods which could have saved many of you from this. It is only by studying and understanding me and how I work that you have the hope of mitigating, if not altogether avoiding, the deaths and suffering that I could not help but bring. Pity that Charles Darwin is still centuries away towards the future!”
And so it was then, so it is now. Among the highest number of fatalities in the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic are those coming from the frontliners: the good doctors, nurses, hospital workers and civil servants who go out to work day-in-and-day-out amidst the openly infected and the possibly infected. They are the dedicated, selfless heroic people, the type God is supposed to be pleased with and the logical recipients of His blessings. Yet it is among them that death makes its greatest harvests. Why? Because no gods are really behind this. Only Nature. Expose yourself more to the virus and the higher your chances of getting sick and dying from it. This is regardless of who you are. Nature has no religion, no god, no politics, no morals. You can recite the Oratio Emperata every hour, pray the rosary nonstop until it burns, shout Allah Akbar every chance you get, pray ten times a day facing Mecca, invoke all the Christian saints and Hindu gods and do Zen meditations all you want yet Covid 19 will remain Covid 19, which could kill you, unless you can be faithful and obey what Science tells you about it: avoid crowds, wear your mask properly, wash your hands often, avoid touching your face and get your vaccine.
This book, written by a great, great grandson of Charles Darwin, was made into a film starring Paul Bethany and Jennifer Connelly. I’ll see if I can watch it somewhere.
But Charles Darwin, an upright, kind man with no mean bone in his body, a sure candidate for sainthood had he been a Roman Catholic, was a man of Science. Aside from his family (a very large brood) the thing which consumed his time was the observance and study of the natural world: the land formations, the seas, their inhabitants great and lowly (he even studied worms, insects and clinging plant vines), those still with us and those which had gone extinct. And from his systematic and meticulous study he had realised that we live in a violent, vicious, whimsical and cruel world and that as human beings we share the lowly beginnings and common fate of all the other living things—that we are not special.
These, he found to be incompatible with the concept of an all-good, all merciful God of his religion who supposedly created all that there is. With religion, based on tales and ancient stories bereft of evidence, one could probably get away with human beings’ cruelty to their fellowmen. For those who do evil supposedly will get their comeuppance when they die, as they will be fried in hell for eternity; while their victims’ tears will be dried in heaven where they shall enjoy eternal bliss.
But what of the other animals like us? A buffalo dies in anguish while being feasted on by a pack of lions, its flesh being carved out of its body while still alive. A mother cat is strangled to death and slowly swallowed whole by a snake while her litter watch helplessly and perhaps eaten too or abandoned to die without their mother. Entire populations perishing in a famine or other natural calamities like volcanic eruptions, forest fires or floods. It has been pointed out that 99.99% (almost 100%!) of all the species that had ever lived had now become extinct. Extinction, indeed, for all living things, is the norm; survival only being a very rare exception. Even right now extinction of many species is ongoing. In a distant future, our planet itself will die a cosmic death and unless we, as a specie, manage to transplant ourselves to another galaxy, we would also go the way of the dinosaurs.
Is there a meaning, however, to human suffering? Emma, Charles Darwin’s wife, thought there is a moral purpose to it—“to help us exalt our minds,” she said. But Charles said that even if human suffering has a moral purpose (though merely assumed, without evidence), suffering definitely has no moral purpose for other creatures—
“‘The number of men in the world is as nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral improvement,’Charles wrote with sudden vehemence, ‘It revolts our understanding’ to suppose that God denied his benevolence to animals. ‘What advantage can there be in the sufferings of the millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time?’
“Charles acknowledged that the argument was a very old one, but felt it was strong. David Hume had put the point in his ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.’ His character Philo said: ‘Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is I’mpotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?’ Phil had also anticipated Charles’s concern about the natural world. ‘Look around this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.’
“Charles’s final suggestion on the matter returned to his starting point. While the incidence of pain throughout natural life could not be reconciled with any claim that God was universally benevolent, ‘such suffering is quite compatible with the belief in Natural Selection, which is not perfect in its action, but tends only to render each species as successful as possible in the battle for life with other species, in wonderfully complex and changing circumstances.’
“He came back also to an underlying question—in a sense the most radical of all those that he asked himself—whether humans could hope ever to understand these deepest issues. David Hume had suggested in his ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’ that we might believe the wordld to have been created by a being with intelligence and a purpose simply because that happens to be how we as humans act and understand each other’s actions. This might then be another ‘anthropomorphic’ guess, like our presumption that animals had human feelings. Spiders, on the other hand, might believe that an ‘infinite spider’ had spun the world from his bowels. ‘Why an orderly system may not be spun from the belly as well as from the brain, it will be difficult…to give a satisfactory reason.’ Charles had felt in the 1860s that the issue of order in the natural world was ‘too profound for the human intellect,’ and ‘a dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.’ He now took up Hume’s radical concern; he cast it in his own terms of human descent from animal origins, and applied it to the fundamental issue. ‘Can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience?’”
This is a world full of misery and death. Something theologians during Charles’s time found difficulty in reconciling with the supposedly good and benevolent Creator. He believed, however, that he had found part of the answer to this seeming mystery: cruelty and pain were not a moral issue because they were the outcome of purely natural process. ‘Man acts on and is acted on by the organic and inorganic agents of this earth, like every other animal,’ he wrote in 1839. This idea, very controversial at that time, is not easy to dismiss. For it stands the test of experience. Take the case of pandemics. During the mid 14th century when there was more faith in god than science Europe, Eurasia and North Africa were visited by the so-called Black Death or the Bubonic Plague. All sorts of propitiations, prayers and succour to gods, saints, heaven and all that is holy were made but to no avail. An estimated 75 MILLION to 200 MILLION people perished. There were instances where homes and entire towns and villages were completely decimated, all inhabitants thereof claimed by the Grim Reaper. It was a time when Nature just did what it does which, to one with moral inclinations, would appear to be senseless or brutal when, in fact, there was really nothing senseless or brutal with what nature does. It was just the way things were.
During the Black Death there were even two cities which fought over the relics of a saint who was believed to have strong intercessory powers to convince God to spare a place from pestilences. Both wanted to have the relics with them so they can use them during religious processions and public prayers. One of these cities indeed got the relics yet it was not spared from the plague at all. There were also roving flagellants during that time who believed that prayers and self-sacrifice could appease an angry god. Then imagine the incessant, heartfelt and sincere prayers: parents praying over their sick children; children praying for their dying parents; entire families huddled in their homes, dying one-by-one praying and crying, hearing the wailings and sobbing of their neighbours followed by eerie silence after they’d all expired. But heaven just watched unperturbed.
But had Nature been some kind of an intelligent being it could have just been watching those praying victims of the plague and perhaps silently muttering: “It is not praying to the gods which could have saved many of you from this. It is only by studying and understanding me and how I work that you have the hope of mitigating, if not altogether avoiding, the deaths and suffering that I could not help but bring. Pity that Charles Darwin is still centuries away towards the future!”
And so it was then, so it is now. Among the highest number of fatalities in the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic are those coming from the frontliners: the good doctors, nurses, hospital workers and civil servants who go out to work day-in-and-day-out amidst the openly infected and the possibly infected. They are the dedicated, selfless heroic people, the type God is supposed to be pleased with and the logical recipients of His blessings. Yet it is among them that death makes its greatest harvests. Why? Because no gods are really behind this. Only Nature. Expose yourself more to the virus and the higher your chances of getting sick and dying from it. This is regardless of who you are. Nature has no religion, no god, no politics, no morals. You can recite the Oratio Emperata every hour, pray the rosary nonstop until it burns, shout Allah Akbar every chance you get, pray ten times a day facing Mecca, invoke all the Christian saints and Hindu gods and do Zen meditations all you want yet Covid 19 will remain Covid 19, which could kill you, unless you can be faithful and obey what Science tells you about it: avoid crowds, wear your mask properly, wash your hands often, avoid touching your face and get your vaccine.
This book, written by a great, great grandson of Charles Darwin, was made into a film starring Paul Bethany and Jennifer Connelly. I’ll see if I can watch it somewhere.
February 29, 2012
I wanted to read this book before I saw the movie. Then while reading Return to Sodom and Gomorrah I found the perfect link to make me read it now. Charles Pellegrino did such a great job talking about our link to apes so I was ready to learn about Darwin. This book is great. I learned about Darwin the family man plus his work. A more complete portrait of the man than just the old man with the beard, and his thoughts on us and apes. Then I watched the movie "Creation". It wasn't well done at all. If I hadn't read the book I wouldn't have known the real facts. But I found another movie about Darwin that was excellent. "Darwin's Darkest Hour". This is what "Creation" should have been. It showed the real man and the way he really interacted with his family. If one wants to just watch a movie about Darwin this is the one. But the book was great.
March 15, 2012
Nicely written and touching biography.
May 18, 2013
Most people know the name Darwin but don't really know much about him. If u r interested in knowing facts about his life and how personal events had great significances and effect upon his theories, it's a must read. It's also good to know those people who have influenced Darwin like William Wordsworth and other great figures who were interested and inflluenced by his theories, like George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte and many others.
January 9, 2011
I enjoyed it a fair amount. The subject matter is really interesting to me. It dealt more with the family life of Charles Darwin than his science, and dwelt a lot on the loss of his daughter Annie, which profoundly affected him. It moved very slowly much of the time and probably could have been shortened a fair amount. But overall I found it worthwhile.
February 25, 2010
Excellent biographical book on Darwin, of course, but also very interesting facts on the medicine, sciences, and overall society of mid-19th century England.
August 9, 2012
If you're interested in the way Darwin came up with his theory, how he lived and what were the things that touched him most in his life, this book would definitley interest you. I liked it a lot
June 4, 2018
During the voyage, the whole of my pleasure was derived from what passed in my mind p. 5 !!!!!
It has always appeared to me more satisfactory to look at the immense amount of pain and suffering in this world as the inevitable result of the natural sequence of events, i.e. general laws, rather than from the direct intervention of God. It was easier to come to terms with pain and suffering if there was no question of a Divine purpose governing the life and death of individuals you cared for. * * *
when asked on his views on the grounds for belief in God . . . The safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty.p. 304
But, he insisted, even if suffering had a moral purpose for mankind, it had no value for other creatures. "the number of men in the world is as nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral improvement." Charles wrote with sudden vehemence: It revolts our understanding" to suppose that God denied his benevolence to animals. "What advantage can there be in the sufferings of the millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time?" p. 336
[one of last quotes from Darwin "I am note the least afraid of death." p. 353
It has always appeared to me more satisfactory to look at the immense amount of pain and suffering in this world as the inevitable result of the natural sequence of events, i.e. general laws, rather than from the direct intervention of God. It was easier to come to terms with pain and suffering if there was no question of a Divine purpose governing the life and death of individuals you cared for. * * *
when asked on his views on the grounds for belief in God . . . The safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty.p. 304
But, he insisted, even if suffering had a moral purpose for mankind, it had no value for other creatures. "the number of men in the world is as nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral improvement." Charles wrote with sudden vehemence: It revolts our understanding" to suppose that God denied his benevolence to animals. "What advantage can there be in the sufferings of the millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time?" p. 336
[one of last quotes from Darwin "I am note the least afraid of death." p. 353
December 11, 2020
For me, there was too much cultural and family life information. I was more interested in Darwin’s development of his theory, but I found I had to plow through a lot of family life in which his thoughts on evolution and the descent of man was interspersed throughout. Until the death of his daughter Annie. After Annie’s passing, I thought the book gathered more steam concerning Darwin’s ideas. This part of the book I’d rate at least 3 stars.
The author covers quite a bit of ground regarding life in 19th Century England, particularly the relationships between gentry and servants, leisure, parenting, medical treatments, and grief. Anyone who has an interest about life in the Victorian Era should find this book highly informative. I was surprised to learn that Charles and Emma did not attend the funeral of their daughter and that this absence was not unusual for the period.
I found interesting the different thinking between Charles and Emma concerning God and the afterlife. Darwin’s personal internal conflict between his thoughts about God and his theory, his growth from believer to agnostic, was a fascinating aspect to this dual biography of a family and of his theory.
The author covers quite a bit of ground regarding life in 19th Century England, particularly the relationships between gentry and servants, leisure, parenting, medical treatments, and grief. Anyone who has an interest about life in the Victorian Era should find this book highly informative. I was surprised to learn that Charles and Emma did not attend the funeral of their daughter and that this absence was not unusual for the period.
I found interesting the different thinking between Charles and Emma concerning God and the afterlife. Darwin’s personal internal conflict between his thoughts about God and his theory, his growth from believer to agnostic, was a fascinating aspect to this dual biography of a family and of his theory.
March 11, 2010
Creationism/God and evolution are not mutually exclusive. Darwin was obsessed with work, very conflicted about revealing his revolutionary findings because even his wife was not comfortable with them until he let her be involved in making a decision about the results. Darwin was so conflicted about his life's work he physically suffered numerous illnesses and, almost a recluse, he isolated himself from the pleasures of having a family. His findings though are the basis for numerous medical developments and the media reduced all this to "humans evolved from the monkeys". Hmmm will I ever believe anything written by the media again?
March 17, 2011
It's hard to believe there was enough narrative here to build a movie around. The book spends a lot of time talking about the domestic arrangements in the Darwin household and very little talking about the seminal work that Darwin produced. Little is said of Darwin's struggles to reconcile his theory of the origin of species with the prominent religious views of his day, nor how the public at large received his views. We are given some taste of what a few theologians thought, but mostly the reactions are from other scientists who were sympathetic to these new ideas. It was well written and researched, but the story had little to keep the reader's interest.
December 12, 2019
This book was written by Charles Darwin's great-great grandson. It gives a personal perspective on a man who has become larger than life. The loss of his daughter Annie at age ten had a great impact on Darwin, and this biography blends together his family life with his scientific studies. It's a very interesting mix, and it humanizes the man whose theory of evolution changed everything. The book was made into a film starring husband and wife Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly; I'll have to see it!
July 14, 2022
I actually gave up on this one. As much as I enjoy biographies, it was as if the author felt like he had to include every minor detail from the diaries and letters he had, whether they were relevant or not. When I got to the descriptions of every single game the children played (one of them once drummed on the table with his spoon!) I decided that in this case, the movie may actually be better than the book.
August 31, 2014
Reading this book was like listening to interviews with Charles Darwin and his immediate family (his wife, his children, his cousins etc) and friends. I feel like I learned to know Darwin on a more familiar level, especially on the death of his daughter Annie. You also feel sorry for him, that his life's greatest work was torn to pieces and ridiculed by society. Great book.
April 25, 2017
I enjoyed this perspective on Darwin's life. It was informative regarding his theory of evolution by natural selection but gave more context surrounding his life when he developed his hypothesis, something I try to give my students when I introduce evolution so that they understand what a truly remarkable discovery it was.
July 1, 2011
This is more a book about Darwin and his relationship with his children, especially Anne, than anything else. However, it does give a good background of his story and what led him to write his famous works on evolution.
August 19, 2016
This book wasn't super compelling, but it was easy to put down and pick up again later.
It did really give you a sense of Charles and Emma Darwin as people. They truly loved each other and their family, and were really funny. I would love to have tea with Emma Darwin.
It did really give you a sense of Charles and Emma Darwin as people. They truly loved each other and their family, and were really funny. I would love to have tea with Emma Darwin.
March 20, 2010
Amazing the realtionship between Darwin and poet William Wordsworth.
August 7, 2010
Focuses on Darwin's personal life!
October 18, 2010
Took time to get into this book. By the time I finished reading it, I felt as if I knew the family personally and had a sense of what it was like to live during that time period.
September 15, 2011
I enjoyed reading about the human side of Darwin and how his family relationships helped shape and influence his theories.
March 23, 2012
Very interesting look at Charles Darwin and the lead up to his various books.
December 9, 2014
It's a bit like journeying together with Darwin through his life. I think this book is an important compliment to Darwin's scientific books.
February 10, 2016
A detailed look into Darwin's personal life and how his beliefs and research evolved, written by one of his descendants.
March 5, 2021
I didn't know what to expect from this book, but it was a decent book. Thinking about watching the movie.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews