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CHARLES DARWIN

Name: CHARLES DARWIN
Author: Janet Browne
ISBN: 0-394-57942-9

VOYAGING

by Janet Browne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1995

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This first volume of a definitive new Darwin biography is full of insight into both the man and his era. Browne (History of Science/The Wellcome Institute, England) draws on her background as an associate editor of the eight- volume edition of Darwin's correspondence. In his early years, Darwin showed no great ambition; the youngest son of a country doctor, he was an unmotivated medical student in Edinburgh, and a Cambridge scholar nominally studying for the ministry. The opportunity to sail with HMS Beagle in 1831 came more or less out of the blue; he was invited to act as a gentleman companion to its neurotic young captain, Robert Fitzroy, as much because of his respectable family background as because of his connections in the Cambridge naturalist community. But motivated now by the chance to observe nature directly, Darwin made the most of it. Browne devotes considerable space to his eye-opening experiences in South America, the Gal†pagos Islands, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa—giving a remarkable picture of life at sea as well as of the scientific explorations. Returning to England, Darwin quickly made important scientific friends, who were impressed both by his collections and by his quick mind. But it was only slowly—after a closer study of the finches he had found in the Gal†pagos and after his reading of Malthus's population theories—that his theory of natural selection took shape. At first, especially after his marriage to his conventionally pious cousin Emma Wedgwood, Darwin was afraid to do more than hint at his speculations, and then only to trusted scientific colleagues. But as he became more sure of the meaning of his data, he realized that he was obligated to make his findings public. The book closes in 1856, as Darwin is preparing to write On the Origin of Species. An exciting and richly evocative portrait of one of the most important thinkers in scientific history that leaves the reader wishing the second volume were already on hand. (48 pages photos and 4 maps, not seen)

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1995

ISBN: 0-394-57942-9

Page Count: 656

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
DARWIN’S ORIGIN OF SPECIES
by Janet Browne

- BOOK REVIEW
CHARLES DARWIN
by Janet Browne

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)