There's a tongue-in-cheek quality to this biography that leaves you rather uncertain as to what the authors really thought of Darwin. The writing style is breezy, postmodern, very much a look back at Darwin from the 21st century point of view. That makes this chunky book quite easy to read, but it did grate on me sometimes.

I did like the way in which this book placed Darwin's life at the center of so many others, and showed the links between his thinking and that of his contemporaries. He comes across as a man always anxious to preserve the status quo and avoid the extreme views both of the religious conservatives and of the atheist scientists. And yet his work was the catalyst for a total upheaval in the way people thought; Darwin was right at the center of the late nineteenth century shift towards secularism that is still playing out today. By the end of his life he was practically regarded as a saint by many, as a devil by others. But the picture I'm left with is of a sickly, fussy, obsessive worker who, after the Beagle voyage that made his name, was happiest in his comfortable yet modest home with his experiments, his devoted wife, and his children. ( )

A great biography of Charles Darwin. This is a very thorough investigation into the life of a man whose ideas have changed the world.

I was fascinated by Darwin's background, motivation and fear of the consequences of publishing On The Origin Of Species.

Informative and sometimes very moving. ( )