Saddled With Darwin Book

In 1831, the young Charles Darwin set off for South America aboard the Beagle, on a journey which was destined to transform modern thought forever. Over the following five years, Darwin collected the information upon which he based his theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859. His travels throughout South America took him from Rio de Janeiro through the pampas of Argentina, Patagonia, the Falkland Islands, Chile and the Galapagos Islands.The results of Darwin's momentous journey have profoundly affected the history of 20th-century culture, so it seems appropriate that at the close of the century, 165 years after Darwin's first departure from Plymouth aboard the Beagle, Toby Green should retrace Darwin's footsteps in a remarkable feat of both human and intellectual endurance. The result is Saddled with Darwin, a travelogue detailing Green's dogged pursuit of the ghost of Darwin from Rio to the Galapagos Islands. Like Darwin, Green chose to travel mainly on horseback, although as his mammoth odyssey develops a string of horses are often traded in for the solitude of travelling on foot. As the book develops Green encounters a continent in transition, and very different from the one experienced by Darwin. Saddled with Darwin is packed with the extraordinary incidents and encounter one would expect to befall a Cambridge philosophy graduate following Darwin around South America, interspersed with Green's absorbing reflections on the great man's legacy. Encountering ecological disaster and crippling poverty as he travels, Green's book is a fascinating travel Bildungsroman of the author's own journey of personal development, and a wonderfully humane account of relations with the people encountered along the route of this remarkable journey. --Jerry BrottonRead More