Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, the Beagle, and the Voyage that Changed the World by Tom Chaffin
Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, the Beagle, and the Voyage that Changed the World by Tom Chaffin
Charles Darwin -- alongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein -- ranks among the world's most famous scientists. In popular imagination, he peers at us from behind a bush white beard. But this image crowds out the vital younger man whose curiosity, risk-taking, and travels aboard H.M.S. Beagle's voyage is frequently misunderstood, its mission and geographical breadth often unacknowledged. The voyage's activities associated with South America -- particularly its stop in the Galapagos archipelago, off Ecuador's coast -- eclipse the fact that the Beagle, sailing through the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, also circumnavigated the globe.
Mere happenstance placed Darwin aboard the Beagle. He was only twenty-two years old -- an unproven, unknown, aspiring geologist -- and brought aboard as a last-minute request by the depression-prone ship's captain Robert FitzRoy.
Over the course of the Beagle's five-year voyage, Darwin, filled with curiosity about his new environments, conducted overland excursions and explorations. Those outings, lasting weeks, even months, took him across mountains, pampas, rainforests, and deserts. An expert horseman and marksman, he won the admiration of gauchos he encountered along the way, collected countless specimens, and made colorful, often opinionated, observations about the places and people he encountered.
Acclaimed historian Tom Chaffin reveals a passionate young Darwin in all his complexities -- the brashness that came from his privileged background, the Faustian bargain he made with Argentina's notorious caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, his abhorrence of slavery, his time with Indigenous communities, and his ambition to carve himself a place amongst his era's celebrated travelers and intellectual giants.
Drawing on a rich array of sources, Chaffin crafts an evocative and epic narrative that surpasses in breadth and intimacy the naturalist's own Voyage of the Beagle -- one that brings Darwin's odyssey to vivid life.
PEGASUS BOOKS, HARDCOVER, 1ST EDITION, 1ST PRINTING, 2022
THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK.