Darwin's Great Adventure

Over Xmas I was in England and picked up some goodies in the round of gift-giving that I had specifically asked for. My contention is that the gift one picks for oneself that the donator thoroughly approves of is the best of both worlds. My Dad thoroughly approved of the book he bought for me;From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books.

I'm only a short way into "The Voyage of the Beagle", and it is a delight. Darwin was a beguilingly clear writer, which may account for the rapidity with which his ideas became famous. "VOTB" was published a long time before "The Origin of Species" and was a bestseller in its day. Reading it with the advantage of hindsight, one can sense where his thought was going, but the contemporaneous reader is only made aware of the intriguing questions Darwin puts.

It holds up very well for a book written by an amateur in the mid-19th Century.