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Summary: Natural selection among human beings
Review: ----------- -----------1) The mechanism of natural selection among human beings: "the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct" 2) The way natural selection operates: "Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe,and race with race. (...) when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption." 3) The morality of Darwinism: "Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind" Now you don't have to read the book.
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Summary: Natural Selection among people
Review: ----------- ----------- 1) The mechanism of natural selection among people explained: "the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct" 2) The way this encroachment until extinction occurs among people: "Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe,and race with race. (...) when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption." 3) The morality of Darwinism: "The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts, and "not even in inmost thought to think again the sins that made the past so pleasant to us." 1,2,3 those are the main things in the book in my opinion. It fails on standards of systemacy, abstraction, exactitude, verification, logic/reasoning, neutrality and formalising of theory.
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Summary: War, slaughter, slavery, cannibalism and absorption.
Review: 1) The mechanism of natural selection among human beings: "the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct" 2) The way natural selection operates: "Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe,and race with race. (...) when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption." Make no mistake about it, all I did here was to distill the "formal" hypothesis from a book that's supposedly science. By the quotations above from this book, Darwin's version of Natural Selection theory stands or falls.
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Summary: War, slaughter, slavery, cannibalism and absorption.
Review: 1) The mechanism of natural selection among human beings: "the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct" 2) The way natural selection operates: "Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe,and race with race. (...) when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption." Make no mistake about it, all I did here was to distill the "formal" hypothesis from a book that's supposedly science. By the quotations above from this book, Darwin's version of Natural Selection theory stands or falls.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought police
Review: Darwin operated in a thought world completely unacceptable to the "politically correct" speech/thought codes found on most college/university campuses today. If one subscribes to Darwinian or neo-Darwinian ideas, one has to wonder what new "great ideas" we are missing out on today, now that the politically correct thought police have taken over the media, education, and popular entertainment establishments--effictively suppressing the sort of thought that nurtured Darwin's "scientific" speculations.
Rating: 
Summary: More than meets the highest standards.
Review: How is it possible that anyone could be as ignorant as Rondeltap and give this great classic less than 5 stars? Given that it was written in the middle of the 19th Century, it more than meets the highest scientific standards of its time. Furthermore, except perhaps for Darwin's own Origin, it is arguably one of the most important works of its era. When we find that the writings of Marx, Kant and many other giants of that Century can no longer instruct us, we shall find this one still penetratingly relevant.
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Summary: True Darwinism
Review: In the beginning of the book, you will find a sort of definition of Natural Selection, which is about all the space Darwin spends on formulating his hypothesis. "Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct? We shall see that all these questions, as indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be answered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with the lower animals." On about 15 occasions later in the book he writes about how this selective encroachment of human races occurs, most signicicantly when writing that: "Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, and race with race. (.....) and when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption." Racial and tribal genocide is the chief operator in shaping humans as they are today from an apelike progenitor, according to Darwin. This work is not up to scratch compared to classics of biological science from the same timeperiod, such as Mendel's "Versuche". This work is more appropiately read together with Haecekel's "Natural Creation History" (Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte), which Darwin profusely praises in the beginning of his book. Both these works from Haeckel and Darwin carry decidedly racist and generally judgemental content. Generally judgemental in continuously talking about higher and lower in an expressely moral way. For instance Darwin finds it neccessary to assert what the highest state of morality is for a person, and elsewhere he urges people in any way "inferior" not to marry. The science is shoddy, especially the formulation is seriously lacking. The moral judgementalism, which makes up a great deal of the book, is generally coarse and without significant emotion showing through.
Rating:
Summary: Cautious Science at its Best
Review: This book contains a wealth of facts, compiled during Darwin's life on matters which were highly controversial at the time. His prior book, Origin of Species, provided the scientific framework for thinking that mankind might, in some way, be a descent from the animal kingdom. For personal reasons, there was some doubt, at the time, whether it would ever be diplomatic to admit such a thing to the human beings themselves, right in their very faces. The title which Darwin placed on this book showed how easy it would be to imagine that the fundamental distinction was closely linked to the question of whom an individual might choose to have sex with, given the great parallels to a wide range of behavior in the animal kingdom. I have looked in this book for evidence that philosophy is a set of ideas adopted mainly in relation to sex, but the philosophy of the fittest for that kind of activity seems to be a bit more modern than Darwin. On a scale of stillborn to born with a brain, Darwin was definitely born with a brain, but it didn't make him crazy enough to suggest that which we may imply ourselves. There are a lot of facts in this book, compared to the number of suggestions, but it shows a considerable amount of thought.
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Summary: IT SUCKS
Review: THis book is so wack. I should use it for toilet paper. What a moron. Survival of the fittest my a$$! What an ignorant fool for writing such garbage. Do not buy it!
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Summary: Masterpiece or wonder?
Review: While Darwin's theory of natural selection was accepted in the 1930s, Darwin's theory of sexual selection remains controversial. In Ernst Mayr's recent What is Evolution? Darwin's theory of sexual selection receives about two paragraphs. By comparison, Darwin considered sexual selection important enough to receive an equal number of pages as he devoted to his theory of natural selection. 130 years later, he's still probably the only evolutionary theorist to make this judgement. Equally, one must wonder that if Darwin had not come up with the idea of sexual selection, would anyone else have done so?
This book is not merely revolutionary on a theoretical basis, but also in its thoughts on animals - including humans. 100 years before Jane Goodall `discovers' chimpanzees using tools, Darwin devotes more than a page to animals using tools. More than 110 years before vets begin to give dogs prozac, Darwin argues that dogs have a sense of humour. His views on animals raises them higher than any modern theorist: his views on humans lowers them to where they are - animals, and thus the title.
130 years later, this book is still radical. It is probably the most significant alteration to our understanding of ourselves since Copernicus. Its contents, with its stark views on human violence, continues to make aetheists uneasy. The book is very readable, and Darwin's clarity, sincerity and incisiveness places him above all modern writers. Revolutionary, thoughtful, and warm, it remains more a wonder than a masterpiece.
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