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IN DARWIN’S SHADOW

Name: IN DARWIN’S SHADOW
Author: Michael Shermer
ISBN: 0-19-514830-4

THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE

by Michael Shermer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2002

A useful companion to Wallace’s—and Darwin’s—own writings, and a fine contribution to the history of science.

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A scholarly appraisal of the curious life and work of the naturalist who, some insist, was the true father of the theory of evolution.

Against them, Shermer, the founder and editor of Skeptic magazine, observes that nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds, and neither does science: “On close examination, most great scientific revolutions are more like gradual evolutions.” Thus Wallace (1823–1913), a careful reader of the literature of his day, followed Charles Darwin on a parallel course toward the conclusion that species and environments changed in time and that some force of nature somehow steered that change. Though it shocked Darwin to realize that he’d been beaten to a scientific scoop, he recognized Wallace’s great contributions to evolutionary theory, and, as did Wallace, “recognized the gain to be had through cooperative interaction.” History, of course, remembers it as Darwin’s theory, which was just fine by the self-effacing Wallace and his descendants; in this regard, Shermer quotes one of his subject’s grandsons, who wrote, “none of us desire to call it ‘Wallace’s theory of natural selection,’ but many of the Darwin people seem defensive about it.” The author enumerates some of the reasons that Wallace did not attain the same fame as Darwin, one of them being Wallace’s later devotion to a kind of spiritualism that attributed the movement of natural selection to an “Overruling Intelligence,” a quasi-scientific appeal to the divine that dismayed Darwin and his materialist-minded followers. Along with the basic facts of Wallace’s life and thought, Shermer explores the process of creative thought, the politics of science, and the sociology of scholarly communication, all of which should be of much interest to students of science, regardless of how they view Wallace’s work.

A useful companion to Wallace’s—and Darwin’s—own writings, and a fine contribution to the history of science.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-19-514830-4

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
CONSPIRACY
by Michael Shermer

- BOOK REVIEW
HEAVENS ON EARTH
by Michael Shermer

- BOOK REVIEW
SKEPTIC
by Michael Shermer

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.