This is essentially a history of the spread of the idea of natural selection in social and political theory in the decade 1872 - 1882, culminating with a banquet given at Delmonico's in New York in honor of the visiting British scientist Herbert Spencer, and attended by great scientists, academics, capitalists, and political leaders of the era.

The book is structured chronologically, jumping back and forth between six or seven main stories as they unfold over the decade: Spencer's relationship with his American publicist; Darwin's last years; Beecher's ups and downs as America's most prominent religious leader; Carl Schurz and reform politics; Andrew Carnegie's rise as a steel magnate; and the promotion of evolution and social darwinism by academics at Harvard and Yale. The biggest problem is that these stories have only limited points of intersection; the banquet at Delmonico's is one of the few, and isn't particularly dramatic. With this many threads, none is narrated in great depth, which is probably fine, since the book relies heavily on secondary sources that cover each story in greater detail. Overall, it was an interesting read -- helpful for getting a sense of the chronology -- and a good jumping off point for more in-depth reading about the most interesting figures, like Carnegie and Schurz. ( )

Connecting Darwin to social Darwinism

Darwinian theories of natural selection and evolution have been used (and misused) to explain just about everything. Charles Darwin himself never intended it so, the naturalist was a biologist and his theories were meant to be applied apolitically, amorally. But the idea of evolution, positivism, was just too irresistibly easy to be applied to social, political, and economic contexts.

In Barry Werth's new book, he traces the emergence of "social Darwinism" in America through the central characters of Herbert Spencer, Henry Ward Beecher, and Andrew Carnegie. Werth shows how Darwin's theories were institutionalized within every aspect of American society because it comfortably fit witin the context of the Gilded era but also because it conveniently supplied an ideology which explained American foundational principles of republicanism, Protestantism, and post-reconstruction Jim Crow.

If there is a criticism of the book, it is the excessive biographical information on Ward and Carnegie, which results in a bloated narrative. Otherwise, Werth's analysis is spot on and he uses plenty of great secondary sources to support his arguments.

Overall, a great read. Werth's book helps to connect the dots between Darwin and the philosophy of social Darwinism. ( )