Charles Darwin: Voyaging

Rating:
Summary: The best I've read...
Review: ...and I've read quite a few. Janet Browne has an enormous gift with words that really bring out the person behind the legend. With a wonderful mix of scholarship and story-telling Browne takes us through the early (and most physically adventurous) part of Darwin's life, drawing on letters, reminiscences, and broader history to fill in the gaps that darwin himself left in Beagle and the Autobiography. This is definitely THE biography to read if you want to get a real taste for the source of so much of Darwin's later thinking. My one complaint? WHERE IS VOLUME 2???

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderfully Pleasant Biography
Review: I know a number of people that do not like to read biographies. Whether or not you do read biographies, I have to say that this is the best I have read in the last couple of years. It reads like a novel, nuanced, well-paced and, yes, exciting. It is wonderful to learn how Darwin discovered the Fact of Evolution. Don't miss this one. I wish I could find the first print edition at a decent price. Both volumes are treasures.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the Best of the Best
Review: Janet Browne has done something that is very hard to do. She has written the best biography so far produced of a man who's life has been examined numerous times- Charles Darwin. I have read at least four or five biographies of Darwin, plus his own autobiography, and can say that for engrossing detail, without loosing the main thread, Browne has topped them all! This is the first volume in a two-volume series and I can't wait to dig into the second part, which deals with the Origin of Species and after.

The main strength of Browne's book, Charles Darwin: Voyaging, (and I expect the main strength of her second volume) is that she has a fantastic ability to weave details into the story without getting bogged down. This is a well-written and very well researched book and I found myself amazed at some of the material she had found on Darwin's earlier life, especially as a medical student in Edinburgh. The book is almost a social and scientific history of England starting with the late Georgian period. However, Browne makes the historic references very pertinent to her story. Anybody reading this book and (I'm sure) the second volume, will come away with a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for the struggle that has gone into the development of our modern worldview. Darwin certainly had his flaws, as do we all, but he was also certainly one of the most admirable of men, despite all his human failings. Browne makes us understand why this man was great and how he reached this greatness by following his curiosity beyond the superficial. She also gives us a more detailed understanding as to why Darwin found solace in natural history, instead of following his father, Robert, into the medical profession.

This is certainly just the best book to read to understand Darwin's early life before the publication of the Origin of Species. I recommend it without any reservation.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the Best of the Best
Review: Janet Browne has done something that is very hard to do. She has written the best biography so far produced of a man who's life has been examined numerous times- Charles Darwin. I have read at least four or five biographies of Darwin, plus his own autobiography, and can say that for engrossing detail, without loosing the main thread, Browne has topped them all! This is the first volume in a two-volume series and I can't wait to dig into the second part, which deals with the Origin of Species and after.

The main strength of Browne's book, Charles Darwin: Voyaging, (and I expect the main strength of her second volume) is that she has a fantastic ability to weave details into the story without getting bogged down. This is a well-written and very well researched book and I found myself amazed at some of the material she had found on Darwin's earlier life, especially as a medical student in Edinburgh. The book is almost a social and scientific history of England starting with the late Georgian period. However, Browne makes the historic references very pertinent to her story. Anybody reading this book and (I'm sure) the second volume, will come away with a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for the struggle that has gone into the development of our modern worldview. Darwin certainly had his flaws, as do we all, but he was also certainly one of the most admirable of men, despite all his human failings. Browne makes us understand why this man was great and how he reached this greatness by following his curiosity beyond the superficial. She also gives us a more detailed understanding as to why Darwin found solace in natural history, instead of following his father, Robert, into the medical profession.

This is certainly just the best book to read to understand Darwin's early life before the publication of the Origin of Species. I recommend it without any reservation.

Rating:
Summary: Can't wait for Vol 2!
Review: Janet Browne has written quite a cliff hanger. She leaves off just when Charles Darwin is going public with his then astounding theory. Hopefully Volume II is just around the corner. The agony is unbearable.

Darwin's life is painted with a broad brush. We are given a picture of natural science in Mid-Victorian England. All the players and issues taking place in natural science at that time are illuminated. Miraculously Browne pulls this off without becoming tedious, exhausting, or overhwelming the reader. It's quite a feat.

Browne gives us a peek inside Charles Darwin and we can feel the pull between what is becoming clearly evident to him and the deeply ingrained beliefs of a man who earlier in life was headed for a life as a country parson. He was also upset at how all of this was going to settle on his deeply religious wife. Browne manages this without falling into the trap of psychological analysis, Freudian or otherwise.

I wish all biographies could be as readable and as lucid as this one. As another reviewer here has said: this will become the definitive biography of Darwin's life. I agree. I would rate this book in the top 10 of books of all time on the history of science. Seeing how Darwin is still at center stage in the fight for science education in our schools, this book should be required reading for anyone interested contemporary education or science.

Rating:
Summary: Volume Two is now out!
Review: The pleasure continues in the second volume, which is just out from Knopf. The reviews have been uniformly terrific, which will not surprise anyone who has read this volume.

Rating:
Summary: BEYOND A DOUBT, THE BEST BIOGRAPHY OF DARWIN YET
Review: This is the first volume of two covering the life and works of Charles Darwin. I have read quite a number of books, both about and by Darwin, and this, without a doubt is the best of the biograhies as yet written to date. If covers Darwin from the beginning, up through the voyage of the Beagle, and a bit beyond. Extremely detailed and very well researched, the books reads as smoothly as any novel, yet it is truely a scholarly work. It is one of the most detailed works of this sort I have read. I read a review recently in a trade publication that stated you will go into absolute information overload with this one. That is not far from the truth. As to detailed research, the closest I can think of, off the top of my head, is Dallek's work on LBJ...even that does not come all that close. Ms. Brown's style is wonderful, her thoughts well laid out. The belief in evolution is neither here nor there when reading this work. While it does indeed deal with his life work, i.e. "The Orgin of Species," it gives us more insight to the man, rather than the theory. Whether or not you are an evolutionist or creationist is moot. Darwin's impact on our society and the way we view the world was changed with this man and we should know him and the society that created him. To understand our current history, an understanding of this man and his times is absolutely necessary. I collect books about Charles Darwin, and this one now sets at the head of my "Darwin Shelf." I highly recommend it and highly recommend you add it to your collection.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: This was an excellent book, conveying not only the facts of Darwin's life, but also a lot of information about the time in which he lived and what was happening in the rest of the scientific community at that time. I was also struck by how much a lot of the dialog reminded me of "Pride and Prejudice". My only disappointment was that the book ended too soon. I wanted to find out how controversy over his book affected his relationship with friends and with his wife, and whether his kids turned out well. The book ended just before he wrote "Origin of Species".

However, as good as this book was, it is not for the faint of heart. You have to be really interested in the subject material to get through this book. Necessarily, this book is one tangent after another, covering the lives of the people who influenced Darwin, as well as Darwin himself.

Rating:
Summary: Reads like a novel
Review: Though it never lacks for details about Darwin's life, Janet Browne creates a panoramic sweep of Victorian science. One sees Darwin in full context, as a man of his time struggling with ideas that grew from his research and explorations and yet they were ideas that he himself was not truly comfortable with.

Browne presents the story without a lots of overdramatization. The book is hugely dramatic though the drama comes from the details and not the presentation. It is not a hagiography. There no kettle drums rumbling in the background.

When you read the book you will gain insights into how science grew from an amateur affectation of afternoon beetle collecting trips to the countryside, to a fully recognized profession. Browne miraculously pulls this off without ever leaving sight of Darwin and his life.

Like a good "Perils of Pauline" Saturday morning serial, the volume I leaves off at the most incisive part of Darwin's career, thus leaving thousands of readers waiting breathlessly for Volume II.

The book seems so complete so I passed on reading any other biographies of Darwin, but I did find Adrian Desmond's Huxley : From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest to be a good companion work and interim filler. T.H. Huxley took up Darwin's cause and became known as "Darwin's Bulldog" This was however just one role that Huxley filled. Huxley himself is also giant of the emerging science movement in Victorian England.

I feel that part of my life is missing until Browne's Volume II arrives.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Delightful
Review: When I see a biography that tops out at over 600 pages, I usually give it a pass. I mean, how much do I really want to know about someone - anyone? Also, as far as Darwin goes, I had already read the excellent life by Desmond and Moore. Yet I went through this book avidly, and would have been sorry to see it end - but that I knew volume II was waiting!

I actually only noticed this book because of the laudatory reviews that appeared recently for volume II ("The Power of Place"). Perhaps it is true that I cannot get enough of Darwin, so I was drawn to this as any addict to his fix. But I think that for me the most appealing thing about Charles Darwin is his quintessential Victorianism. He lived and worked in a privileged position in a culture that was as sublimely self-confident as any the world has ever seen, and that, moreover, bestrode that world as none before or since (our blundering and half-hearted imperialism not excepted).

Actually, the Darwin Story is becoming canonical. Our culture is about the clash of narratives as much as anything else. The Free Market opposes the Welfare State, the Promise of Progress is really the Erosion of Identity, and, most shrilly, the Blind Watchmaker threatens to displace the Christian God.

So, I suppose that to read this book is to choose sides. Shame about that, but there it is. Anyway, even if you know the story, this book (and its sequel) will tell it better and deeper. Janet Browne has not only mastered the Darwin materials, but his milieu as well. She seems to have gone far afield in researching the lives of those that impinged on Darwin, just in order to make throwaway statements and large judgments on people who are perhaps bit players in his life. They, of course, have lives of their own, fully lived, and like a novelist, Browne hints at more that she tells. The occasional summarizing aside of some life that glances on Darwin's gives this book a novelistic texture and feel. The author has pulled off the difficult trick of making us feel she is telling a story that she owns.

Browne starts with a leisurely scene-setting that places the Darwins and the Wedgwoods (Charles's paternal and maternal lines) in the Georgian society of the day. She discusses the culture and the family traditions, and places the players in the landscape and houses them grandly. (Very helpful here is a generous genealogy in the front matter.) We see young Charles carefree and out-of-doors, with his loving and indulgent older sisters and his great friend, older brother Erasmus. We see him rather reluctantly growing up, attending Edinburgh University and then Cambridge, where he is unscathed by the official curricula, but emerges with firm friends among some bug-loving students as well as the naturalists on the faculties.

About one-third of this book covers the voyage of the Beagle, the forming event in Darwin's life as a scientist. Of its five years, Darwin spent more than three of them on land, exploring, collecting, and observing all up and down the coasts of South America and, finally, in islands of the Pacific (including, most famously, the Galapagos).

When Darwin got home his troubles began. All the glorious collecting and larking about of his school days and the grand adventure on the Beagle were over. Those experiences drew on his enthusiasm, energy, and growing expertise in zoology and geology. Now, back home, he had to make something of himself, he had to secure an identity. Could he use the physical materials he had gathered and his position in society to do it? Darwin's real story begins when he steps off the dock after five years away from home.

Browne tells this life in a quietly gripping way. The vast amount of material that she had to integrate does not get in the way of the tale, but allows her to tell it seamlessly. She never lets the narrative bog down in irrelevancies, but always paints a full picture of the scene, giving its human, intellectual and social components their due.

The story of Charles Darwin is really the story of an idea. Darwin was the central figure, but Hooker, Wallace, Lyell, Huxley, and many others had important parts to play. But in the progress of abstract ideas the personal is important: a strong motivation for Darwin's secrecy with his thoughts on evolution was to avoid distressing his wife Emma, a fervent believer in a Heaven where she would be reunited with those siblings and children so cruelly taken from her. Browne always shows this human side to science, shows that science is a quite human endeavor. And in this volume she takes the story up to 1856, as Darwin finally decides to take the plunge, after a dozen years of doubts and obsessive preparations.

Now, he will write a book....

After he writes that book, Darwin's life is never the same. Actually, after that, nobody's life is the same. Big drama is coming up in volume II, so why bother with this book? It is entertaining and brilliantly done, but is just prologue, right?

I disagree. In fact, if you just glance through "The Origin of Species" you will see that Darwin put most of his life up to that point into his book. And his later life was built firmly on the foundation of his earlier: he made the friends and formed the ideas that were to become central in the controversies over natural selection. Themes have been stated and developed. Volume II will develop them further, and introduce new matter, but does not tell a separate story.