CHARLES DARWIN WAS an all-around nice guy-agreeable, mild-mannered, appealingly shy. Plagued by violent fits of vomiting brought on at the least sign of stress, he avoided controversy at all cost. Yet he was a passionate and keen observer of nature, and what he noticed in creatures as small as barnacles, worms, and beetles eventually led him to his big, bold, and ragingly controversial theory of evolution-how species change over time. Well aware that his ideas about species adaptation would rock the world of biology, Darwin played a twenty-year waiting game with himself before going public in 1859 with The Origin of Species. Would he be surprises that even now, one hundred and fifty years later, debate still rages over Darwinian evolution? Not al all!
With wit and clarity, Kathleen Krull plots the evolution of Charles Darwin-his floundering student days, his life as a well-heeled young London gentleman, and, of course, his astounding five-year round-the-world journey aboard HMS Beagle that set him on the path of his life's work.