Yes, this is a pricey book. But it's worth every penny

Robert Jastrow does a wonderful job of explaining the various theories and mindsets of Charles Darwin without pressing any bias in the mix. Robert, if you read this, thank you once again for another outstanding read.

This is a really cool bit by Darwin, who spent some serious time observing earthworms. He made his friends help him sometimes too, it seems. Ninety-five bucks is a lot of money though. Check a univerity library or something and Xerox it.

A really informative introduction to Darwin, his ideas, his works, and his impact on science and society. Young people will get a great deal out this volume and will find it perfect for writing reports or preparing for classroom discussions. On the other hand, adults unfamiliar with Darwin's ideas will benefit from the author's impressive job organizing and explaining some potentially difficult to understand material.

This book is very good especially if you haven't read very much about Darwin and are not familiar with his works. The selections are good representations of his overall work and the editor's notes are helpful. An index would be nice.

Interesting depiction of Darwin, Cap. Fitzroy and the indian Jemmy Button.
Also you will find the most primitive tribes and the most courageous and resolute missionaries.
It is possible to find a lot of things in this history: abnegation and faith, adventure and hope, but also emotions and sadness... over all: reality!

Leading scholars in science explain for the general reader various Darwinian and, more interestingly, NON-Darwinian theories and approaches to evolution. This book is a unique introduction to the many aspects of evolutionary theory flowering today beyond and sometimes in opposition to neodarwinism. Anti-evolutionists like to harp on disputes *within* evolutionary sciences; this book shows why current debate offers no solace at all to so-called "scientific" creationism or anti-evolutionism

"You will be haunted by Three Spirits." So forewarns Jacob Marley's ghost to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge, a miser of stingy, unfavorable traits. And so begins the enduring Christmas classic distinguished by almost everyone. Come along on an erratic journey with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, all of whom attempt to point Scrooge onto a virtuous path. Meet the most notable characters ever introduced in literature: Bob Cratchit, angelic Tiny Tim, and good-natured Fred. With vivid descriptions of Victorian England and enlightening dialogue, 'A Christmas Carol' will enrapture both the young and old throughout the year with a vital lesson on hope and benevolence for humanity. This, I find, is treasured most of all in this brief story marvelously crafted by the creative Charles Dickens. No matter how many adaptations of the book one has seen on television or as films, the real source is highly recommended and should not be missed. For if you do pass the book up, you are being just a Scrooge (metamorphically speaking, of course!).

It's hard to think of a literary work that has been filmed and staged in more imaginative variations than Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"--there's the excellent George C. Scott version, the delightful Muppet version, the charming Mr. Magoo version, etc., etc. But ultimately true "Carol" lovers should go back to Dickens' original text, which remains a great read.

"Carol" tells the story of cold-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who despises the Christmas holiday and scorns all who celebrate it. But a visit from a series of supernatural beings forces him to reevaluate his attitude--and his life.

With this simple plot Dickens has created one of the enduring triumphs of world literature. It's a robust mix of humor, horror, and (most of all) hope, all leavened with a healthy dash of progressive social criticism. One thing I love about this book is that while it has a focus on a Christian holiday, Dickens puts forth a message that is truly universal; I can imagine this story resonating with people of any religious background, and also with more secular-oriented people.

This is a tale of greed, selfishness, regret, redemption, family, and community, and is enlivened by some of the most memorable characters ever created for English literature. Even if Dickens had never written another word, "A Christmas Carol" would still have, I believe, secured his place as one of the great figures of world literature.

Well, I finally read it (instead of just watching it on the TV screen).

This is what you can call a simple idea, well told. A lonely, bitter old gaffer needs redemption, and thus is visited by three spirits who wish to give him a push in the right direction. You have then a ghost story, a timeslip adventure, and the slow defrosting of old Scrooge's soul. There are certain additions in the more famous filmed versions that help tweak the bare essentials as laid down by Dickens, but really, all the emotional impact and plot development necessary to make it believable that Scrooge is redeemable--and worth redeeming--is brilliantly cozied into place by the great novelist.

The scenes that choke me up the most are in the book; they may not be your favourites. I react very strongly to our very first look at the young Scrooge, sitting alone at school, emotionally abandoned by his father, waiting for his sister to come tell him there may be a happy Christmas. Then there are the various Cratchit scenes, but it is not so much Tiny Tim's appearances or absence that get to me--it's Bob Cratchit's dedication to his ailing son, and his various bits of small talk that either reveal how much he really listens to Tim, or else hide the pain Cratchit is feeling after we witness the family coming to grips with an empty place at the table. Scrooge as Tim's saviour is grandly set up, if only Scrooge can remember the little boy he once was, and start empathizing with the world once again. I especially like all Scrooge's minor epiphanies along his mystical journey; he stops a few times and realizes when he has said the wrong thing to Cratchit, having belittled Bob's low wages and position in life, and only later realizing that he is the miser with his bootheel on Cratchit's back. Plus, he must confront his opposite in business, Fezziwig, who treated his workers so wonderfully, and he watches as true love slips through his fingers again.

It all makes up the perfect Christmas tale, and if anyone can find happiness after having true love slip through his fingers many years ago, surprisingly, it's Scrooge. With the help of several supporting players borrowed from the horror arena, and put to splendid use here.

Pickwick Papers is a wonderful book, and no doubt much has been written about it in academic and literary circles. But from a layman's perspective, it is simply a fun read. One would almost think it the work of a great master approaching the end of a career, consciously deciding to lay down the heartache of Great Expectations or the martyrdom of A Tale of Two Cities to take a jovial and whimsical jaunt through the English language and the realm of imagination. Yet the bumbling and somehow delightful misadventures of the Pickwickians fall at the beginning of Dickens' career. Comic relief is offered well before Hard Times sets in.

Take an independently wealthy, magnanimous old fellow and surround him with a group of close friends. Send them together on a journey of desire to explore the world about them, meet new people, and experience the fullness of life, and you essentially have the plot of Pickwick Papers. The plethora of characters Dickens introduces along the way add considerable color to the narrative, not only because they come from such a vast array of backgrounds, but because they themselves are colorful in their own right:

The first and most obvious example might be that of Mr. Alfred Jingle, the loquacious vagabond rapscallion who rescues the Pickwickians from an altercation with a feisty coach driver. One of Mr. Pickwicks cohorts, Mr. Snodgrass, receives a blow to the eye during the incident, after which Mr. Jingle is pleased to suggest the most efficacious remedies: "Glasses round-brandy and water, hot and strong, and sweet, and plenty-eye damaged, sir? Waiter! Raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye-nothing like raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient-damned odd, standing in the open street half an hour with your eye against a lamp-post-eh-very good-ha! ha!" While Pickwick reads the legend of Prince Bladud by candlelight, we find this description of King Hudibras: "A great many centuries since, there flourished, in great state, the famous and renowned Lud Hudibras, king of Britain. He was a mighty monarch. The earth shook when he walked-he was so very stout. His people basked in the light of his countenance-it was so red and glowing. He was, indeed, every inch a king. And there were a good many inches of him too, for although he was not very tall, he was a remarkable size round, and the inches that he wanted in height he made up in circumference." The young surgeon, Benjamin Allen, is described as "a coarse, stout, thick-set young man, with black hair cut rather short and a white face cut rather long [...] He presented altogether, rather a mildewy appearance, and emitted a fragrant odour of full-flavoured Cubas." Dickens notes that the casual visitor to the Insolvent Court "might suppose this place to be a temple dedicated to the Genius of Seediness" and whose vapors are "like those of a fungus pit." Seated in this luxuriant ambience, we find an attorney, Mr. Solomon Pell, who "was a fat, flabby pale man, in a surtout which looked green one minute and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered." A final sample from a list of worthy characters too long to mention might be Mr. Smangle, the boisterous whiskered man whom Pickwick encounters in debtors prison: "This last man was an admirable specimen of a class of gentry which never can be seen in full perfection but in such places; they may be met with, in an imperfect state, occasionally about the stable-yards and public-houses; but they never attain their full bloom except in these hot-beds, which would almost seem to be considerately provided by the legislature for the sole purpose of rearing them [...] There was a rakish vagabond smartness and a kind of boastful rascality about the whole man that was worth a mine of gold."

The book itself is a goldmine full of textures, personas, venues, and idiosyncrasies of a bygone age. These are delight to behold, as the reader is thus invited to enjoy experience and descriptive beauty for their own sakes. Plot largely takes a backseat to the development of relationships, which can be seen as a myriad of subplots contributing to a never-ending story. Numerous vignettes which are incidental to the narrative add another level of richness, and it seems clear that Dickens offers them for an enjoyment all their own. There is something of "l'art pour l'art" throughout the whole work which expresses a love of language and a love of human nature. As Dickens might have summed it up, "All this was very snug and pleasant."

The Pickwick Papers, (or rather The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club) although not Dickens' best work, is still a wondeful novel. The writing isn't as consistently good as it is in his later novels, but none of the writing is bad, and there are several flashes of brilliance which seem to herald what Dickens' would become when his genius had time to ripen (one of these can be found at the end of chapter 44, a beautifully written account of the death of a prisoner in a debtor's prison). In the beginning, despite being very funny, the novel, and indeed Mr. Pickwick, may seem rather inane. Keep reading. The story of Mr. Pickwick's trial and eventual imprisonment is one of the most brilliant pieces of comic literature, and Mr. Pickwick grows into a truly monumental character by the end. And Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick's cockney servant, is one of the best characters in all of Dickens. Clever, witty, and cynical, he seems to light up every page. The book has a very happy ending, in which all loose ends are tied together and every character gets what he or she deserves. It is truly uplifting. I strongly reccommend this book.

Charles Dickens' first novel, Pickwick Papers follows the adventures of the Pickwick Club as they involve themselves in comic mishaps and misunderstandings. His travels as a newspaper reporter acquainted Dickens with the coaches, coaching houses, and inns of England which he uses as settings in Pickwick Papers. Gradually he abandons the use of the club format, which he found too restrictive.

Dickens' fame and popularity were forever established with the introduction of his greatest comic characrter, the immortal Sam Weller as Mr Pickwick's servant. Pickwick Papers contains some of Dickens' greatest characters: Mr Pickwick, the most interesting title character; the strolling actor Jingle and his friend Job Trotter; Sam's father Tony Weller who battles with the red-nosed Rev Stiggins; and the Fat Boy.

Memorable scenes include Christmas in the country, a Parliamentary election, and the famous court trial, which Dickens frequently recited on his reading tours.

I highly recommend this book if you've never read Dickens before. This is a must-have for Dickens fans.

This book is a well-written, genuine account of a very important moment in the history of man. I feel it is a must-read for anyone of a scientific background who also has strong religious ideals. Though it falls short of reconciling two, seemingly, contradictory theories of creation, it does allow the reader to glimpse into the souls othe staunch supporters of both sides. I found this very enlightening. The one short-fall is that the ways in which the characters speak are very unfamiliar and often difficult to comprehend for those not accustomed to such dialect.

Those who have already read all current Darwin biographies, should give this book a try. Mr. McDonald uses familiar facts in an entirely new way to create a convincing and sometimes moving novel. Unfortunately, the book doesn't make sufficiently clear why natural selection was such a threathening concept to dissenters, let alone Victorians in general. If you like the book, I would recommend reading "The Discovery of Slowness" by Sten Nadolny, too.

This book represented to me, above everything else, the story of a man that we've never heard of before, who played a major role in helping Charles Darwin formulate his theory of Evolution by Natrual Selection. This book is about Syms Covington, field assistant to Darwin during and shortly after the voyage of the beagle. His realization of the theory's implications is an epiphany that McDonald scripts brilliantly, as Covington is torn between pride in his role, anger for lack of recognition, and fear because of the conflict with his faith. This thread looms again and again, building suspense as we wait with Covington for "The Origin" to be published-or, really, unleashed upon the world. It is this emotional conflict that is a key element of this book. On the down side, it gets off to a slow start and, unfortunately in my mind, there isn't enough interaction between Covington and Darwin...the day-to-day stuff of tromping in paradise collecting ad infinitum, prepairing specimens, measuring, etc. However, that may have been intended or necessary because of their backgrounds: darwin was from the aristocracy and covington was a commoner. That comes across in the book, but I think that it could have been explored much more.

I have both a personal and professional interest in natural history and view Darwin as one of my scientific heros. I've just added little known syms covington to that list...as written, he was truly an engaging character and with remarkable depth.