An electrifying account of the extraordinary untold history behind Darwin's theory of evolution
Rebecca Stott is a novelist and historian. She is Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and an Affiliated Scholar at the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University. She is the author of eleven books including three non-fiction history of science books: Darwin and the Barnacle, Theatres of Glass: The Woman who Brought the Sea to the City and Oyster, and two historical novels, and most recently the bestselling Ghostwalk, shortlisted for the Jelf First Novel Award and the Society of Authors First Book Award, and The Coral Thief, both of which have been published in many different countries. She is regularly asked to contribute to radio and TV documentaries and arts programmes. Rebecca Stott lives in Cambridge.
Extraordinarily wide-ranging and engaging ... Stott's gifts as a
novelist mean that each of her subjects emerges as living in
ordinary weather and among objects, family and political
difficulties ... She draws on an array of scholarship and assembles
it into an intricate sequence of stories and investigations that
are her own ... Gripping
*Gillian Beer, The Sunday Telegraph*
Thrilling ... impressively researched ... A gripping and ambitious
history of science which gives a vivid sense of just how many
forebears Darwin had; even if none of them can match the man
himself
*Sunday Times*
Rebecca Stott's beautifully written and compelling book is the
story of some of the men - and they were all men - who came before,
and how the evolution of their ideas mirrors the evolution of
species ... These mavericks and heretics put their lives on the
line. Finally, they are getting the credit they deserve
*Independent on Sunday*
Clever, compassionate and compellingly written, Stott has
interwoven history and science to enchanting effect. The evolution
of the theory of evolution is a brilliant idea for a book, and she
has realised it wonderfully
*Tom Holland*
From Aristotle onwards, evolutionists have - thank God - always
been a quarrelsome lot; and not much has changed. Rebecca Stott
shows how dispute, prejudice and rage have accompanied their
science from the very beginning. Darwin's Ghosts is a gripping
history of the history of life and of those who have studied it,
with plenty of lessons for today - perhaps for today's biologists
most of all
*Steve Jones*
A masterful retelling of the collective daring of a few like-minded
men who had the courage to publish their speculations at a time
when to do so, for political as well as religious reasons, was to
risk everything. It is the story of an idea that would change the
modern world
*Observer*
Impressive scholarship and compelling narrative; a fine book
*Brenda Maddox*
Charles Darwin provided the mechanism for the evolution of the
exquisite adaptations found in plants and animals but the awareness
that species can change had been growing long before him. With
wonderful clarity Rebecca Stott traces how ideas about biological
evolution themselves evolved in the minds of great biologists from
Aristotle onwards. Darwin would have loved this brilliant book -
and so do I
*Sir Patrick Bateson, President of the Zoological Society of
London*
Exciting, gripping and addictively readable
*Independent on Sunday on Darwin and the
Barnacle*
This is a brilliant performance with a grip like that of the
Ancient Mariner
*New Scientist*
Mesmerizing ... Ghostwalk has an all-too-rare scholarly authority
and imaginative sparkle ... Rebecca Stott has accomplished
something distinctively fresh
*New York Times Book Review on
Ghostwalk*
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