Summer Reading 03

Another book I got to read this summer was David Quammen's The reluctant Mr Darwin in the Great Discoveries series subtitled "an intimate portrait of Charles Darwin and the making of his theory of evolution". Reluctant is a contentious epithet as although he showed a certain amount of reticence, an eagerness to avoid any sort of confrontation (he avoided funerals like the plague) there was also a driving desire to be first with his idea in print
Quammen is a journalist so his book is easy to read and probably as accurate as any although hardly anything like neutral in its treatment. Skipping over the voyage of the Beagle, largely he presents a man who comes over as a thorough scientist and a hopeless sceptic, his agnosticism and atheism growing over the years. In the anniversary year of the Origin of Species here this 2006 biography is a good one to get hold of and read.