Charles Darwin

Today the book Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist was delivered to my house. I got a used hardcover book in excellent condition and as usual for Amazon it was almost free.

Including the index and everything else, it's 808 pages. I should know everything there is to know about Charles Darwin when I'm done reading the whole thing.

I'm interested in Darwin because he was the most important person who ever lived.

An Amazon customer review:

This is a really first-class biography, bringing the full weight of Charles Darwin's "torment" to light. As a devoutly religious man during the oppressively Christian Victorian era, it took uncommon fortitude and intellectual honesty for him to follow the paths down which his researches led him, all the way to the ultimate conclusions which today bear his name.

Much like H.W. Brands's biography of Benjamin Franklin, the authors here do an excellent job of bringing Darwin back to life, both the highs and the lows (including lots of personal tragedy) that shaped his monumental career. Heartbreak played as great a role in his life as discovery.

Compulsively readable without sacrificing detail, all of the major milestones of his life are covered in a personal perspective which gives exactly as much emphasis as events must have had at the time -- even ones which have since reached mythic proportions. This is, as Stephen Jay Gould touts on the cover, "Unquestionably, the finest [biography] ever written about Darwin."