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A Major letdown. I had expected much more from Janet Browne, famed Darwin biographer, from her book Darwin's "Origin of Species": A Biography. While the book itself is very readable (I read it in one sitting), it's too superficial a treatment of Charles Darwin's monumental tome On the Origin of Species. As part of the Books That Shook the World series, it doesn't give the reader enough background on the social and scientific situation in Victorian England when the book was developed, written and finally published. So how would we know that it really "shook" the world then?

Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin's ideas, as well as Robert Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation were mentioned briefly, but their differences with Charles Darwin's theory of Natural Selection wasn't fleshed out. Neither was Darwin's development of his central arguments tackled in any appreciable degree. Browne mentioned Darwin's reliance on Malthus, but again, it was only discussed in brief.

I cannot recommend Browne's book except to those who are just beginning their study of Darwin. Instead, I recommend Niles Eldredge's Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life. It also tackles the development of Darwin's book, but with more detail.