Banquet at Delmonico's: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America

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 show more 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. show less

The last chapter, the Banquet, was a wonderful end to a great book. The author did a superb job of weaving the evolution theme in and through the gilded age of American history. The book has plenty of depth and weight in addition to the factual rendition of this brief historical period. Thrilled I "stumbled" onto this book.