In Apostles of Reason, Molly Worthen offers a sweeping history of modern American evangelicalism, arguing that the faith has been shaped not by shared beliefs but by battles over the relationship between faith and reason.

When Darwin finally published The Origin of Species in 1859, there was no guarantee that the grand theory of natural selection would become one of the most valuable ideas impacting biology and our modernity. It was so controversial that some disapproving scientists, many in the Church, and powerful others worked to stop it from becoming known and accepted. This is the story of Darwin, his life, times, and some of the brave scientists who supported and advocated for him at the birth of the scientific revolution.

This book offers a highly engaging history of the world's most famous secret society, the Cambridge 'Apostles', based upon the lives, careers and correspondence of the 255 Apostles elected to the Cambridge Conversazione Society between 1820 and 1914. It examines the way in which the Apostles recruited their membership, the Society's discussions and its intellectual preoccupations. From its pages emerge such figures as F. D. Maurice, John Sterling, John Mitchell Kemble, Richard Trench, Fenton Hort, James Clerk Maxwell, Henry Sidgwick, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes. The careers of these and many other leading Apostles are traced, through parliament, government, letters, and in public school and university reform. The book also makes an important contribution in discussing the role of liberalism, imagination and friendship at the intersection of the life of learning and public life. This is a major contribution to the intellectual and social history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to the history of the University of Cambridge. It demonstrates in impressive depth just how and why the Apostles forged original themes in modern intellectual life.

Peter Allen explores the origins and history of the influential secret society the Cambridge Apostles.

Darwin's Camera tells the extraordinary story of how Charles Darwin changed the way pictures are seen and made. In his illustrated masterpiece, Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1871), Darwin introduced the idea of using photographs to illustrate a scientific theory--his was the first photographically illustrated science book ever published. Using photographs to depict fleeting expressions of emotion--laughter, crying, anger, and so on--as they flit across a person's face, he managed to produce dramatic images at a time when photography was famously slow and awkward. The book describes how Darwin struggled to get the pictures he needed, scouring the galleries, bookshops, and photographic studios of London, looking for pictures to satisfy his demand for expressive imagery. He finally settled on one the giants of photographic history, the eccentric art photographer Oscar Rejlander, to make his pictures. It was a peculiar choice. Darwin was known for his meticulous science, while Rejlander was notorious for altering and manipulating photographs. Their remarkable collaboration is one of the astonishing revelations in Darwin's Camera. Darwin never studied art formally, but he was always interested in art and often drew on art knowledge as his work unfolded. He mingled with the artists on the voyage of HMS Beagle, he visited art museums to examine figures and animals in paintings, associated with artists, and read art history books. He befriended the celebrated animal painters Joseph Wolf and Briton Riviere, and accepted the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner as a trusted guide. He corresponded with legendary photographers Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, and G.-B. Duchenne de Boulogne, as well as many lesser lights. Darwin's Camera provides the first examination ever of these relationships and their effect on Darwin's work, and how Darwin, in turn, shaped the history of art.

During their lifetimes, Wallace and Darwin shared credit and fame for the independent and near-simultaneous discovery of natural selection. Their rivalry, usually amicable but occasionally acrimonious, forged modern evolutionary theory. Yet today, few people today know much about Wallace. This book explores the controversial life and scientific contributions of the Victorian traveler, scientist and spiritualist. His twelve years of often harrowing travels in the western and eastern tropics place him in the pantheon of the greatest explorer-naturalists of the nineteenth century. Tracing his discovery of natural selection, the book then follows the remaining fifty years of Wallace's eccentric and entertaining life. In addition to his divergence from Darwin on two fundamental issues--sexual selection and the origin of the human mind--he pursued topics that most scientific figures of his day conspicuously avoided, including spiritualism, phrenology, mesmerism, environmentalism, and life on Mars.--From publisher description.

Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, an imprisoned doctor in the Auschwitz camp, wrote that Nazi doctors hoped studying twins would solve the problem of faster reproduction of superior races. Nazis hoped to have each German mother bear as many twins as possible.What Darwin influenced went far beyond the Nazi death camps: Shocking political, social, and scientific legacies of Darwin and his family Disturbing disclosure of how over 45 million Christians were killed in the 20th century because of their faith Revealing and layman-friendly presentation. This book is the result of 30 years of research and study carefully documenting the common destructive threads that tie some of history’s most murderous dictators, uncaring capitalists, and aggressive social activists to the flawed concepts of Charles Darwin in an effort to change the world — and how they succeeded. The extermination of races considered “lower” than others, the profound lack of empathy for less-advanced cultures, the corrupted atheistic justifications for taking the lives of millions — all done to advance the agendas of social Darwinism at work in the world today. More than mere theoretical discussions, we have seen the horrifying evidence of the practical results when applying these destructive and misleading concepts to society in the last 100 years!

In God After Darwin, eminent theologian John F. Haught argues that the ongoing debate between Darwinian evolutionists and Christian apologists is fundamentally misdirected: Both sides persist in focusing on an explanation of underlying design and order in the universe. Haught suggests that what is lacking in both of these competing ideologies is the notion of novelty, a necessary component of evolution and the essence of the unfolding of the divine mystery. He argues that Darwin's disturbing picture of life, instead of being hostile to religion-as scientific skeptics and many believers have thought it to be-actually provides a most fertile setting for mature reflection on the idea of God. Solidly grounded in scholarship, Haught's explanation of the relationship between theology and evolution is both accessible and engaging. The second edition of God After Darwin features an entirely new chapter on the ongoing, controversial debate between intelligent design and evolution, including an assessment of Haught's experience as an expert witness in the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District on teaching evolution and intelligent design in schools.

This Life of Charles Kingsley is a detailed intellectual biography, which is at the same time a critical and contextual study. Working from the original manuscript letters, the author has placed the events of Kingsley’s life against a social-historical-religious background, paying much attention to such mid-nineteenth-century issues as geological discoveries, the Oxford Movement, biblical Higher Criticism, Chartism, sanitary reform, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, Darwinism, the American Civil War, and the anti-slavery campaigns. Analyses of Kingsley’s relationships with important contemporaries are allotted ample space, and special emphasis has been given to themes on which previous biographies have remained relatively silent. Kingsley emerges from this study as one of England’s leading nineteenth-century voices as poet, novelist, social reformer, churchman and historian.

The author presents the first full scale intellectual portrait of Ward.