The Descent of Man: An Annotated Edition

I think that given how open everyone seems to be these days about their personal peccadilloes, their deep dark secrets, their private passions, and seeing how we’re all adults here, it wouldn’t be outside of modern social decorum for me to come out and admit that I – and I very much hope you won’t be shocked by this – have a foot…

…note fetish.

There – I’ve said it! It’s something that I’ve had since I was a young man. It began innocently enough – just a mild desire for clarification on particularly obscure points, but now it’s grown into a consuming passion for extensive details about things that might sometimes even be considered insignificant.

Needless to write that when I learned of the forthcoming publication on 21 April of The Descent of Man: An Annotated Edition of Darwin’s Classic Work by Princeton University Press, I needed a moment to compose myself. The first annotated edition ever produced of Charles Darwin’s possibly most controversial book, this new work is edited by Prof. James T. Costa and Prof. Elizabeth E. Yale and promises to place Mr. Darwin’s ideas and their sources in both their own time and explore them in light of new discoveries. As “Descent” has long been a challenging book for even the most interested of naturalists and historians, it is hoped, and very much expected, that this new work will open up a more thorough understanding of what it has long offered its readers in the past and convey what it still has to offer new readers today.