What is to know someone? Can you really tell what makes that particular person that person only by knowing the details of his or her life events? Simply Darwin is not a typical biography — this is an intelectual dissection of Darwinism, for this is how you really get to know the man behind it all.

Pinpointing its manifold philosophical antecedents, Michael Ruse explains in an easy to follow way how Evolution and Natural Selection finally dawned on Darwin — how this polite, discreet, non-confrontational man set himself to change the course of biology, science, and even history. For Darwinism is not only a scientific theory. "[F]rom so simple a beginning" (DARWIN, 1859), the Darwinian revolution has spread much farther than its original field of biology. And that is one of the most important and illuminating features of this book. In it you will find an exploration of the consequences of Darwin's controversial theory, its upsides and downsides, the difficulties it encountered, the many ways it has been appropriated (or misappropriated) by other fields, and how it is still changing our world today. In Ruse's words, "for or against, no one denies that Darwin’s ideas stimulate and provoke. For that reason if for no other, no educated person today should be ignorant of the life and labors of Charles Darwin. In science and in culture, he is one of the seminal figures of all time."

So, is this book worthy of your time? If you're a Darwin buff, this being a Michael Ruse's book is enough to make you want to read it. However, if you're not, but nevertheless you want to understand how the idea of evolution by natural selection evolved (inevitable pun), how it changed the ideas of subsequent thinkers, how it is still very much being a part of our everyday understanding of the world today, and all that in a very short, to the point, and clear manner, this book surely won't disappoint you. If by the end of it you fall in love with the topic, the author even offers a suggested reading list to deepen your understanding. What a neat package!


A brief note on the rating
4 in 5? Graphically is very misleading. Goodreads suggestion for each star is much more illuminating. One star, did not like it; two, it was ok; three, liked it; four, really liked it; five, it was amazing(!).

I really, really liked this book. However, this is not, and does not pretend to be, a masterpiece of literature (think of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, or Saramago's Memorial do Convento, as an example). If I reserve the amazement to the masterpieces, 4/5 is the highest I can give to works of a different caliber — works that I really, really like, such as this.
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