Just finished "The Origin",

by Irving Stone. The biography of Charles Darwin. It wasn't easy, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, but I am glad I read it. After reading, and thoroughly enjoying, "The Agony and the Ecstacy", also by Stone, I thought I would try another of his books. It started out a little dry, as Charles grew up in a priveleged family during the first part of the 1800's, outside of London. After studying to be a doctor, in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, he left medical school after he was unable to watch, or do, surgery on children who were unanaesthetised (sp?). Through a series related events, he wound up as a 'naturalist' on the H.M.S. Beagle. The scheduled two year trip took five long years, and the rest, as they say, is history. To read how he came to his conclusions, yet fought them for years, and how he was villified by the church, makes for (somewhat) interesting reading. The actual journey was amazing. To see his documentation and attention to detail through all his many publications and disciplines is simply amazing, and helps the reader to understand that his theory of natural slection, survival of the fittest and descent of man is the result of a lifetime of work and study. He was well rewarded and thoroughly rebuked for his earthshaking views, but his work has stood the test of time, though some, to this day, still can't accept his well documented thesis. At least he wasn't killed by the church, as was Copernicus, who stated that the earth revolved around the sun. As I said, I wouldn't recommend it, but am glad I read all 750+ pages. An amazing man, villified and celebrated, for reporting the truth as he saw it....