The Origin of Species - Hardcover

Charles Darwin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517123207 ISBN 13: 9780517123201

Publisher: Gramercy Books, 1998

Synopsis

The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. It is the major book of the nineteenth century, and one of the most readable and accessible of the great revolutionary works of the scientific imagination.
The Origin of Species was the first mature and persuasive work to explain how species change through the process of natural selection. Upon its publication, the book began to transform attitudes about society and religion, and was soon used to justify the philosophies of communists, socialists, capitalists, and even Germany's National Socialists. But the most quoted response came from Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's friend and also a renowned naturalist, who exclaimed, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"

About this title

Review:

It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable.

To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here.

Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T. H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin, Amazon.com

Review:

"Why does Darwin's theory matter now? Because it is the basis of modern biology and much medical research; it provides a tool with which to understand the natural world; it offers a deeper, if imperfect, understanding of our behaviour, about where we came from and where we might be going" (Observer)

"The single best idea anybody ever had" (Daniel Dennet, philosopher)

"The most important book ever written" (New Scientist)

"No other book has so transformed how we look at the natural world and mankind's origins" (Sunday Telegraph)

"There are few books that I read more than once but The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin is one" (David Attenborough)

About this edition

• Publisher: Gramercy Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0517123207
• ISBN 13: 9780517123201
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 544