by Mark Sumner
First published 2010
Darwin faces a battle that extends far beyond the scientific community. His carefully constructed theory of evolution becomes a weapon in the hands of Social Darwinists who strip away its nuance and complexity. They take his name but abandon the substance of his work, twisting natural selection into justification for their social and economic schemes. Darwin watches as selective pressures, the delicate mechanism he identified in nature, gets misrepresented and misapplied to human society. The story follows his struggle to defend not just his scientific discoveries but their proper interpretation. As various groups appropriate his ideas for their own purposes, Darwin must confront how scientific truth becomes distorted when it serves political ends. The central tension emerges between Darwin's commitment to careful observation and the simplistic applications others make of his complex theories. At its heart, this is a story about the responsibility that comes with revolutionary ideas and the pain of seeing your life's work misunderstood.
Genres: biography, historical-fiction, 20th-century, evolution, 19th-century, academic, history-of-science, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: social-commentary, unreliable-narrator
Period: 19th-Century, 20th-Century
221 pages · Paperback · Polipoint Pr