Recreates the scientist's historic visit to the Galapagos Islands using his original notebooks and logs, the latest findings by scholars and researchers, and the authors' first-hand knowledge of the archipelago.

The Origin of Species may be the most famous book in science but its stature tends to obscure much of Charles Darwin's other works. His visit to the Galapagos lasted just five weeks and on his return he never left Britain again.

Charles Darwin is of course best known for The Voyage of the Beagle and The Origin of Species. But he produced many other books over his long career, exploring specific aspects of the theory of evolution by natural selection in greater depth. The eminent evolutionary biologist Steve Jones uses these lesser-known works as springboards to examine how their essential ideas have generated whole fields of modern biology.Earthworms helped found modern soil science, Expression of the Emotions helped found comparative psychology, and Self-Fertilization and Forms of Flowers were important early works on the origin of sex. Through this delightful introduction to Darwin's oeuvre, one begins to see Darwin's role in biology as resembling Einstein's in physics: he didn't have one brilliant idea but many and in fact made some seminal contribution to practically every field of evolutionary study. Though these lesser-known works may seem disconnected, Jones points out that they all share a common theme: the power of small means over time to produce gigantic ends. Called a "world of wonders" by the Timesof London, The Darwin Archipelago will expand any reader's view of Darwin's genius and will demonstrate how all of biology, like life itself, descends from a common ancestor.

A new edition of Peter and Rosemary Grant’s classic account of their groundbreaking forty-year study of Darwin’s finches 40 Years of Evolution is a landmark study of the finches first made famous by Charles Darwin, one that documents as never before the evolution of species through natural selection. In this now-legendary study, renowned evolutionary biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant draw on a vast and unparalleled range of ecological, behavioral, and genetic data to continuously measure changes in finch populations over a period of four decades on the small island of Daphne Major in the Galápagos archipelago. In the years since the book’s publication, the field of genomics has developed greatly. In this newly revised edition of 40 Years of Evolution, the Grants combine the results of their historic field study with genomic analyses of their primary findings, resolve unanswered questions from the field, and provide invaluable insights into the genetic basis of beak and body size variation and the history of this iconic adaptive radiation.

A creationist-turned-scientist demonstrates the facts of evolution and exposes Intelligent Design's real agenda Science is on the defensive. Half of Americans reject the theory of evolution and "Intelligent Design" campaigns are gaining ground. Classroom by classroom, creationism is overthrowing biology. In Why Darwin Matters, bestselling author Michael Shermer explains how the newest brand of creationism appeals to our predisposition to look for a designer behind life's complexity. Shermer decodes the scientific evidence to show that evolution is not "just a theory" and illustrates how it achieves the design of life through the bottom-up process of natural selection. Shermer, once an evangelical Christian and a creationist, argues that Intelligent Design proponents are invoking a combination of bad science, political antipathy, and flawed theology. He refutes their pseudoscientific arguments and then demonstrates why conservatives and people of faith can and should embrace evolution. He then appraises the evolutionary questions that truly need to be settled, building a powerful argument for science itself. Cutting the politics away from the facts, Why Darwin Matters is an incisive examination of what is at stake in the debate over evolution.

The book explores how Darwin ́s legendary and mythologized visit to the Galapagos affected the socioecosystems of the Islands, as well as the cultural and intellectual traditions of Ecuador and Latin America. It highlights in what way the connection between Darwin and the Galapagos has had real, enduring and paradoxical effects in the Archipelago. This Twenty Century construct of the Galapagos as the cradle of Darwin’s theory and insights triggered not only the definition of the Galapagos as a living natural laboratory but also the production of a series of conservation practices and the reshaping of the Galapagos as a tourism destination with an increasingly important flow of tourists that potentially threaten its fragile ecosystems. The book argues that the idea of a Darwinian living laboratory has been limited by the success of the very same constructs that promote its conservation. It suggests critical interpretations of this paradox by questioning many of the dichotomies that have been created to understand nature and its conservation. We also explore some possible ways in which Darwin's ideas can be used to better understand the social and natural threats facing the Islands and to develop sustainable and successful management practices.

"Explores the domestic Darwin, the sage of Kent, and brings his work to a new audience. Great Britain was Charles Darwin's other island, its countryside as much, or more, a place of discovery as had been the Galapagos. Darwin's island traces the great naturalist's journey across Britain's modest landscape: a voyage not of the body, but of the mind"--Jacket.

This gorgeous large-format book is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Charles Darwin Foundation on Galapagos. The book comprises a series of invited essays under the editorship of world-renowned photographer and long-term Galapagos resident, Tui de Roy, who has also provided most of the photographs.