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     You have heard of groupies, fans whose affection for musicians, actors, seems to overwhelm their good sense.  Well, I don't quite fit into that category in my admiration for Darwin, but I do admire and value tremendously what the man did, his ideas, his dedication.

     Rereading the above I realize that it doesn't quite say how I feel about this man.  He is simply my hero! I call him "Saint Darwin."  :)

     Darwin wasn't simply a revolutionary, a man whose idea became a hurricane of change, sweeping away so many old, cherished ideas, he was an enigma, a strange, appealing contradiction of a man.  How could this man, in so many ways a conservative product of his upper class British environment, so completely turn it on its head?  How could this man, racked by illness, produce such a tremendous outpouring of work when he was flat on his back for half the day and for the other half barely able to do anything?

Current Events: 

    The American Museum of Natural is hosting an exhibit celebrating Darwin's life beginning Nov. 19, 2005.

 New Books about Darwin:

1. From So Simple a Beginning, released 6Nov2005 by the famous biologist Edward O. Wilson.  I must get this! ($40, W.W. Norton)

2. Darwin, The Indelible Stamp: The Evolution of an Idea released in September, 2005 by the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, James Watson who presents Darwin's major works with four introductory essays.($30, Running Press)

3. The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma, released in October, 2005 by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, which tries to "updeate Darwin's theories with advances in genetic research that answer questions left unresolved in the original material."  This looks like a winner! ($30, Yale University Press)

4. Darwin, Discovering the Tree of Life by Niles Eldridge who with Stephen Gould presented the idea of evolution as an episodic process rather than a continuous one. ($35, W.W. Norton)

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Darwin and the Science of Evolution by Patrick Tort
Darwin and the Barnacle by Rebecca Stott
Autobiography of Charles Darwin by Francis Darwin
The Mismeasure of Man: The Definitive Refutation to the Argument of the Bell Curve by Stephen Jay Gould
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer
Fossils, Finches and Fuegians by Richard Darwin Keynes
Human Origins: The Search for Our Beginnings by Herbert Thomas
Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy
The Flamingo's Smile by Stephen Jay Gould
Song of the Dodo by David Quammen
A Bedside Nature edited by Walter Gratzer
The Meaning of Fossils by Martin J.S. Rudwick
Great Feuds in Science by Hal Hellman
Evolution by Edward J. Larson
Evolution's Workshop by Edward J. Larson
The Dragon Seekers by Christopher McGowan
The Life of Erasmus Darwin by Charles Darwin, edited by Desmond King-Hele
Life on the Earth by John Phillips
"In Retrospect: An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge" by Paul N. Pearson in Nature Magazine, October 16, 2003 issue
Victorian Sensation by James A. Secord
The Monk in the Garden by Robin Marantz Henig
Evolution by Linda Gamlin
Voyages of Discovery by Tony Rice

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