A probing, well-written overview of Darwin’s impact.
A provocative short biography of one of the most influential scientists of all time.
Historian and prolific biographer Johnson (Socrates: A Man for Our Times, 2011, etc.) begins by noting the importance of heredity in Darwin’s accomplishment. Both his grandfathers and his father, arguably geniuses in their own right, bequeathed to Charles the intellectual tools to pursue science, plus the financial security to do so without the compromises of making a living. In addition to a first-rate education, he received the opportunity to join the HMS Beagle expedition, gathering the material evidence for his theory of evolution. Johnson quickly summarizes the key events of Darwin’s formative days, then devotes the meat of the book to his development of the theory and the publication of The Origin of Species. Darwin’s long delay in publishing his theories may have been based on a fear of religious opposition, but Johnson argues that the opposition was comparatively mild. Unfortunately, writes the author, Darwin’s failure to recognize Gregor Mendel’s work on heredity, published only a few years after Origin, deprived him from recognizing the final element needed to explain how natural selection works. Johnson also points to what he considers two central flaws in Darwin’s work: a too-literal acceptance of Malthus’ theories and insufficient understanding of anthropology. More pernicious, according to Johnson, was Darwin’s insufficient understanding of the non-Western societies he encountered. He too easily swallowed second- and thirdhand accounts that portrayed Maoris and other native peoples as bordering on subhuman. Together, Johnson writes, those elements led to social Darwinism, a philosophy that was used to justify the worst atrocities of the modern era, from British colonial oppression to Hitler to Pol Pot. While it may be an unfair accusation, it’s certainly sobering.
A probing, well-written overview of Darwin’s impact.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02571-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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