title: Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution
author:  Rebecca Stott 
description: AbsorbingStotts narrative flows easily across continents and centuriesher portraits evoke vividly realized and memorable charactersStott captures the breathless excitement of an investigation on the cusp of the unknown[a] lively, original book. <i>Darwins Ghosts </i>unfolds like an enjoyable and informative TV series, each episode devoted to a fascinating character who provides a window into the world of ideas of his time.it [helps] us see the necessity of bold and ambitious thinking. And right here, right now, it has additional value. Stott reminds us that even if evolution is currently fought over more brutally in the United States than elsewhere, this fight has a long and stubborn ancestry, one that is by no means peculiarly American or entirely modern.<i>The New York Times Book Review<br /></i><br />"Stott gives personality to her historical characters, introducing their families, their monetary concerns, their qualms about publishing so-called heretical theories, and the obsessions that kept them up at night. She also brings her settings and secondary characters to life, from the deformed sponge divers Aristotle consulted in ancient Lesbos to the exotic animals in the caliphates garden that inspired Jahiz in medieval Basra to lost seashells found by Maillet in the deserts outside 18th-century Cairo. Stotts focus on her settings makes her narrative compellingly readable, and it also reminds us that even as animal species are shaped by their environment, so intellectuals are shaped by their societies.Stotts book is a reminder that scientific discoveries do not happen in a vacuum, that they often stem from incorrect or pseudo-scientific inquiries, and that they are constantly changing, mutable concepts as they meander towards something that might eventually be called the truth.<i>Christian Science Monitor</i><br /><br /> Mesmerizing, colorful, and often movingrichly drawnThis many-threaded story of intellectual development  of different discoveries and enquiries into fossils and polyps, of tropical birds and the curious properties of sponge, of men scouring seashores and caves, and trying to work new ideas around the fixed, immovable pillars of religion  is hypnotic.The subject is science, but Stott has a novelists confidence, and there are vivid tableauxThis is a sympathetic examination of the innate human qualities of curiosity and inquiry, the helpless compulsion every generation has to probe further and further into the structures of creation.<i>The Telegraph (UK)</i><br /><i> </i><br />This extraordinarily wide-ranging and engaging book rediscovers evolutionary insights across a great span of time, from the famous, such as Aristotle and the Islamic scholarAl-Jahiz, to the 16th-century potter Palissy, the 18th-century merman-believer Maillet and the transformist poet and botanist, Rafinesque  as well as from Diderot, Lamarck, Darwins grandfather Erasmus and his contemporary Wallace. And these are just a few of the figures who emerge from the dark into the glow of Stotts attention. Each of them is evoked with an intimacy that is also clearheaded about the way ideas get stuck, or prove wrong-headed, but cant be parted with. Stott can make the nuances of ideas emerge in descriptions that suddenly bring the person close. Gripping as well as fair-minded <i>Darwins Ghosts</i>is a book that enriches our understanding of how the struggle to think new thoughts is shared across time and space and people.<i>The Sunday Telegraph </i>(UK)<br /> <br /> Stott's research is broad and unerring; her book is wonderful. An exhilarating romp through 2,000 years of fascinating scientific history.<i>Nature<br /></i> <br /> Impressively researched... A gripping and ambitious history of science which gives a vivid sense of just how many forebears Darwin had.<i>The Times (</i>UK)<br /> <br /> [Stott] has revealed an extraordinary batch of free thinkers who dared to consider mutability during times when such ideas might still cost the thinker his head.Every character that Stott introduces has a riveting story to tell, and all their histories are told with style and historical nous.Stott has done a wonderful job in showing just how many extraordinary people had speculated on where we came from before the great theorist dispelled all doubts.<i>The Guardian </i>(UK)<br /> <br /> A fascinating history of an idea that is crucial to our understanding of life on earth.<i>The Independent</i>(UK)<br /><i></i><br />Beautifully written and compellingThese mavericks and heretics put their lives on the line. Finally, they are getting the credit they deserve.<i>The Independent on Sunday</i>(UK)<br /><br />"Stott provides the lucid intellectual genealogy of evolution that the great man could not."<i>New Scientist </i>(UK)<br /><br /> Stott does a superb job of setting the scene for her protagonists, whether on the island of Lesbos, 18th-century Cairo, or revolutionary Paris. But her real strength lies in intellectual history. She demonstrates conclusively that evolutionary ideas were circulating among intellectuals for many centuries and that, for most of that time, those who promoted these ideas found themselves under attack by religious and political leaders. Darwins scientific breakthrough, therefore, did not occur in a vacuum, but rather provided the most fully conceptualized theory. Stott has produced a colorful, skillfully written, and thoughtful examination of the evolution of one of our most important scientific theories.<i>Publishers Weekly</i> (starred review)<br /><i><br /></i> A lively account of the pathfinders, iconoclasts, and innovators who were Darwin's spiritual kin. Stott masterfully shows how Darwin, by discovering the mechanism of natural selection, made a unique contribution, but he did not stand alonenor did he claim to.<i>Kirkus Reviews</i> (starred review)<br /> <br /> The history of science comes alive as a drama of vibrant personalities wrestling with a dangerous idea.<i>Booklist</i><br /><br />Charles Darwin provided the mechanism for the evolution of the exquisite adaptations found in plants and animals, but the awareness that species can change had been growing long before him. With wonderful clarity Rebecca Stott traces how ideas about biological evolution themselves evolved in the minds of great biologists from Aristotle onward. Darwin would have loved this brilliant bookand so do I.Sir Patrick Bateson, president of the Zoological Society of London<br /> <br /> Clever, compassionate, and compellingly written, <i>Darwins Ghosts </i>interweaves history and science to enchanting effect. The evolution of the theory of evolution is a brilliant idea for a book, and Rebecca Stott has realized it wonderfully.Tom Holland, author of <i>Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic</i><br /> <br /> From Aristotle onward, evolutionists havethank Godalways been a quarrelsome lot, and not much has changed. Rebecca Stott shows how dispute, prejudice, and rage have accompanied their science from the very beginning. <i>Darwins Ghosts</i> is a gripping history of the history of life and of those who have studied it, with plenty of lessons for todayperhaps for todays biologists most of all.Steve Jones, author of <i>Darwins Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated</i><br /> <br /> The concept of evolution was not created fully formed and placed in the garden one day for our delight and terror but, as Rebecca Stott demonstrates in her inspiring book, evolved as much as we did. <i>Darwins Ghosts</i> is a beautiful tribute to the buried tradition of curious, courageous observers who, before Darwin explained <i>how</i> evolution worked, witnessed the mutability of species for themselves and recorded what they saw.Jonathan Rosen, author of <i>The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature</i><br /> <br /><br /><br /><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>
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  Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Stott
  
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  
  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of
  Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
  
  
  RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin
  Random House LLC.
  
  
  Originally published in hardcover in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury
  Publishing Pic, London.
  
  
  Interview with Rebecca Stott from _The New York Times_ , 8/18/2012, copyright
  © 2012 by _The New York Times_. All rights reserved. Used by permission and
  protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying,
  redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written
  permission is prohibited.
  
  
  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA  
  Stott, Rebecca.  
  Darwin’s ghosts: the secret history of evolution/Rebecca Stott.  
  p. cm.  
  eISBN: 978-0-679-60413-6  
  1\. Evolution (Biology)—History. 2. Darwin, Charles, 1809