Don’t Read The Origin Without It

November 24, 2014 By John E. Riutta in Marginalia Tags: A, anniversary, book, Darwin, Evolution, natural, norton, origin, Princeton, reznick, selection

For those who might be wishing to commemorate this anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s first edition of On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, I highly recommend doing so with a copy of David N. Reznick’s The “Origin” Then and Now: An Interpretive Guide to the “Origin of Species” close at hand. Not so much because Darwin’s work is unusually difficult; rather because by reading Reznick’s book in tandem with it, it will help to put On the Origin in context for both its time and the state of knowledge as then existed, thus greatly opening open up a number of points made by Darwin that might otherwise be missed or misinterpreted.

John E. Riutta

Founder and publisher of The Well-read Naturalist. Inveterate autodidact. Has repeatedly been found out standing in many fields. Plays well with otters.

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