Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #515919 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-28
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .90" h x 5.84" w x 9.08" l, 1.03 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Amazon.com
When Europeans first explored the Galapagos Islands, a rugged archipelago 650 miles off the coast of Ecuador, they were astounded by the forbidding landscape and the odd behavior of the animals and plants they found there. "The place is like a new creation," wrote ship captain George Anson, a nephew of the poet Lord Byron. "The birds and beasts do not get out of our way; the pelicans and sea-lions look in our faces as if we had no right to intrude on their solitude; the small birds are so tame that they hop upon our feet; and all this amidst volcanoes which are burning around us on either hand."

Others who followed, like the onetime sailor and writer Herman Melville, took a dimmer view, calling the place "evilly enchanted ground." Whatever the sentiment, the Galapagos attracted generations of scientists, who, following the example of Charles Darwin, traveled there to test theories of speciation, adaptation, migration, and selection. Their work in the field helped overturn the prevailing orthodoxies of special creation, writes Edward J. Larson in his vigorous history of the islands and their role in the development of modern biological science. Their work also changed the face of the islands themselves, as hundreds and thousands of plants and animals were killed or removed for collections far afield, with a single expedition taking more than 10,000 birds and skins.

Today, the islands face other threats, as tens of thousands of ecotourists travel there each year, disturbing sensitive environments, and as alien plant and animal species are introduced. Still, Larson notes at the close of his fine book, "the archipelago's ecosystem has proved surprisingly resilient in the past," and conservation measures may yet be found to preserve the islands' "age-old solitude." --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
The isolated Gal pagos Islands, lying on the equator 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador, have played a continuing roleone that Larson beautifully evokes herein studies of evolution ever since Charles Darwin spent his celebrated five weeks there in 1835. Larson, who received the Pulitzer Prize in history for Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, relates the islands' fascinating history since their discovery by a Spanish bishop in 1535. They soon became a sometime base for pirates, and, during the South Seas whaling boom of the late 1700s, English and American vessels fished the surrounding waters. English naturalists called attention to their unique plants and animals, which led to Darwin's visit on the Beagle. The young Herman Melville visited them six years later; he was much less favorably impressed. In the late 1800s, San Francisco-based scientific institutions like the newly founded Stanford University sent expeditions to bring back plants and animals, dead or alive (mostly dead). The American army dynamited an airstrip out of the volcanic rock to protect the Panama Canal during WWII. After the war, UNESCO took steps to protect the wildlife, which had been decimated over the centuries. In recent years tourism and the attendant influx of Ecuadorians have proved a dubious blessing for the islands' unique ecosystem, which still attracts scientists who travel there to study evolution at work, as well as creation scientists who hope to disprove it. The book contains two extensive photo galleries and is larded with drawings from old accounts of the islands, but it would have benefited immensely from a modern topographic map and photographs of the terrain. Nevertheless, Larson's first-rate history not only will entertain and engage lay readers but also is required reading for those seriously interested in Darwin, evolution or these remarkable islands.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Larson (Univ. of Georgia; Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, LJ 9/15/97) compellingly reveals the importance of the Gal pagos Islands to scientific exploration and evolutionary biology from the 19th century to the present. The Gal pagos hold a special place in the history of science, having inspired Charles Darwin to conceive the theory of evolution by natural selection. Before Darwin, explorers declared the islands wretched and without worth, but after Darwin, their scientific value was recognized and many expeditions sought to gather specimens to prove various theories of evolution or to satisfy a passion for scientific collection. Unfortunately, well-meaning explorers and collectors depleted populations of some native species until the mid-20th century, when the focus shifted to environmentalism and conservation. Today, the islands have achieved mythic status, having come to represent the ideal laboratory and the ultimate place of "tensions between paradise and purgatory." Highly recommended to lovers of biology for its scholarship and grand storytelling. Joyce L. Ogburn, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.