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Adrian Desmond studied at London University and Harvard, has higher degrees in vertebrate palaeontology and the history of science, and a Ph.D. for his work on Victorian evolution. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Biology Department at University College London. Adrian Desmond's bestselling Darwin (Penguin, 1992, written with James Moore), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Britain, the Grand Comisso Prize in Italy and the Watson Davis Prize from the History of Science Society in America. In 1997 the British Society for the History of Science awarded it the first Dingle Prize for the best book of the decade in communicating the history of science to a wide audience. His study of the pre-Darwinian generation, The Politics of Evolution (1989), received the Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society. He has also published The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs (1975), The Ape's Reflexion (1979) and Archetypes and Ancestors (1982). In 1993 the Society for the History of Natural History awarded him its Founders' Medal. James Moore is a reader in history of science and technology at the Open University.
This excellent biography was runner-up for the 1992 Science Book Prize. Stimulating and provocative, it is as much about Victorian life and attitudes as the man himself - simply because it is impossible to explain the enigma that was Darwin, without putting his work into context. Why was he afraid to publish for 20 years? Why did he later become a recluse? Above all, how could a wealthy gentleman, a stickler for respectability, secretly claim in the 1830s that men are descended from hermaphrodite squids? Even more than Marx or Freud, this affable naturalist transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet - and set off religious debates which still rock society. With the help of much fresh material, this marvellous book brings Darwin and his Victorian world vividly to life. (Kirkus UK)
