Annotated Malay Archipelago coverWhen it comes to natural history books that deserve to be read much more widely than they actually are, Alfred Russell Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago ranks right up there with Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Not only are both masterworks of both thought and style by their respective authors, both are also testaments to a paradigm shift in the study of the natural world nearly unrivaled either before or since. Both also benefit greatly from annotation for the fullness of their content to be well understood by the modern reader.

However whereas Darwin’s work has seen both annotated editions and full length reading guides published, Wallace’s has not; that is, at least not until the recent publication of The Annotated Malay Archipelago by the National University of Singapore Press. Edited by John van Wyhe, this first-of-its-kind edition of Wallace’s famous work promises not only to make Wallace’s ideas and discoveries more accessible to modern readers, it also seeks to put his work as a whole in much richer context by placing Wallace and his writings squarely in their time.