Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0451529065, Paperback)

The book that shook the world
First time from Signet Classic

This is the book that revolutionized the natural sciences and every literary, philosophical and religious thinker who followed. Darwin's theory of evolution and the descent of man remains as controversial and influential today as when it was published over a century ago.

Amazon.com (ISBN 0140432051, Paperback)

It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable.

To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here.

Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0517123207, Hardcover)

The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. It is the major book of the nineteenth century, and one of the most readable and accessible of the great revolutionary works of the scientific imagination.
The Origin of Species was the first mature and persuasive work to explain how species change through the process of natural selection. Upon its publication, the book began to transform attitudes about society and religion, and was soon used to justify the philosophies of communists, socialists, capitalists, and even Germany's National Socialists. But the most quoted response came from Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's friend and also a renowned naturalist, who exclaimed, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"

Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0451627768, Paperback)

One of the most controversial books ever written... The classic that changed the way we look at the world-- and ourselves.

In the words of Ashley Montagu, "Next to the Bible no work has been quite as influential, in virtually every aspect of human thought, as The Origin of Species."

With an introduction by Sir Julian Huxley, this edition reminds us why Darwin's work exploded into public controversy and revolutionized the course of science--and continues to transform our views of the world as a new millennium dawns.

"Next to the Bible no work has been

quite as influential."--Ashley Montagu

* Includes an introduction by Sir Julian Huxley

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0674637526, Paperback)

It is now fully recognized that the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 brought about a revolution in man's attitude toward life and his own place in the universe. This work is rightly regarded as one of the most important books ever published, and a knowledge of it should be part of the intellectual equipment of every educated person. The book remains surprisingly modern in its assertions and is also remarkably accessible to the layman, much more so than recent treatises necessarily encumbered with technical language and professional jargon.

This first edition had a freshness and uncompromising directness that were considerably weakened in later editions, and yet nearly all available reprints of the work are based on the greatly modified sixth edition of 1872. In the only other modern reprinting of the first edition, the pagination was changed, so that it is impossible to give page references to significant passages in the original. Clearly this facsimile reprint of the momentous first edition fills a need for scholars and general readers alike.

Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0393978672, Paperback)

Here is the revised edition of Charles Dawrin's The Origin of Species, introduced and abridged by Philip Appleman, published by W. W. Norton. As much as anyone in the modern era, Charles Darwin changed the course of human thought. The impact on Western civilization of his seminal work has been broad and deep: not only the biological sciences but also social thought, philosophy, ethics, religion, and literature have all been shaped and reshaped by evolutionary concepts. Here, in what Paul Moody (writing in Victorian Studies) has called "a masterly condensation," is a classic edition of Darwin's The Origin of Species . It retains all of the substance of the original book, but only the essential elements of its profuse detail. Philip Appleman, the editor of Darwin, a Norton Critical Edition ("the best Darwin anthology on the market," according to Stephen Jay Gould), has cut deftly to the essence of Darwin's classic, losing none of the continuity or flavor of the original and making available an edition that modern readers will not find overpowering. This revision includes a new introduction by Professor Appleman that perceptively traces Darwin's influence on the world of ideas as well as three additional chapters from Darwin's work.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0553214632, Mass Market Paperback)

The publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859 marked a dramatic turning point in scientific thought. The volume had taken Darwin more than twenty years to publish, in part because he envisioned the storm of controversy it was certain to unleash. Indeed, selling out its first edition on its first day, The Origin of Species revolutionized science, philosophy, and theology.

Darwin’s reasoned, documented arguments carefully advance his theory of natural selection and his assertion that species were not created all at once by a divine hand but started with a few simple forms that mutated and adapted over time. Whether commenting on his own poor health, discussing his experiments to test instinct in bees, or relating a conversation about a South American burrowing rodent, Darwin’s monumental achievement is surprisingly personal and delightfully readable. Its profound ideas remain controversial even today, making it the most influential book in the natural sciences ever written—an important work not just to its time but to the history of humankind.