The Descent of Man

About this book

In The Origin of Species, 1859, Charles Darwin refused to discuss human evolution, believing the subject too `surrounded with prejudices'. He had been reworking his notes since the 1830s, but only with much trepidation did he finally publish The Descent of Man in 1871. In their introduction, James Moore and Adrian Desmond, acclaimed biographers of Charles Darwin, call for a radical re-assessment of the book, arguing that its core ideas on race were fired by Darwin's hatred of slavery. This reprint of the second and definitive edition also contains suggestions for further reading, a chronology, and biographical sketches of prominent individuals.

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Biography

CHARLES DARWIN (1809-82) was an evolutionary biologist, best known for his controversial and ground-breaking On the Origin of Species (1856). JAMES MOORE is Reader in History of Science & Technology at the Open University. He is currently working on a biography of Alfred Russel Wallace. ADRIAN DESMOND is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Biology Department at UCL. He is the author of a 2-volume biography of Huxley and is editing Huxley's family correspondence.