The Voyage of the Beagle: in large print

This was not the best choice for listening to in the car: too much tedious detail, and I found my mind wandering too often. Still, it was interesting, and I learned a lot. Darwin was a promising but obscure student at Cambridge when he was suggested for the trip. By the time he returned, his reputation was made. It's not hard to see why: this book is packed with careful observations and attention to detail, as well as thoughtful analyses of topics from species extinction (though not origins at this stage) to the formation of coral atolls. Darwin is clearly very well-read and makes frequent references to the noted authorities of the time, sometimes supporting them and sometimes disagreeing.I hadn't actually realized that the voyage of the Beagle was as long as it was. I saw it as a year or so, going from England to South America and back again. It was in fact a five-year, round-the-world cruise, covering the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Australia, and numerous other locales as well as the well-known South America and the Galapagos.My favorite parts are actually the more human anecdotes. Darwin is less than enchanted with New Zealand and Australia, and is not afraid of saying so, noting that most of the citizens are ex-convicts. My favorite single anecdote, though, is about the South American governor who is so dedicated to the rule of law that he has himself put in the stocks when he violates one of his own laws. Darwin also indicates his dislike of slavery and admits to feeling shame when he accidentally causes a male slave to flinch when he makes a threatening gesture to him. So much for that creationist conceit.There are two appendices not written by Darwin. One is a summary of the orders given to Captain Fitzroy about the mission of the Beagle, which is very telling of the naval issues of the time. It focuses on getting accurate locations of known ports as well as the possible finding of new ones. As a Hornblower fan (and therefore with some interest in naval trivia), I found this very interesting.The other appendix is Captain Fitzroy's attempt to construe their geological observations to be evidence of the Noachian Deluge. This is not on the same intellectual level as Darwin's writings, and I found it mostly of intellectual interest as evidence that creationist arguments have changed hardly at all in the last 175 years.All in all, it's an interesting book and a classic of natural history, though not something I'd recommend listening to unless one has a passion for the subject.

Remember this says "Journal" and that is what it is. It is his first parson adventures on and off the Beagle. He even includes stories about the people on the ship, the ship's life, and maintenance. He is always going ashore and venturing beyond the ship charter to go where no Englishman has gone before. He makes friends with tyrants and the down trodden. Once, to get an animal to come to him, he lay on his back and waved his arms and legs in the air. Whatever you do, do not turn your back on him. He is always knocking something on the head and taking it back for study. It is fun trying to match the old names for places with the new.

From 1831 to 1836 Charles Darwin, then a young man in his twenties, was the official naturalist on the Royal Navy ship HMS Beagle. The Beagle spent five years completing a survey of the coasts of South America and making a series of longitude measurements around the world. This proved to be one of the most important scientific voyages of the 19th century, for it was on this voyage that Darwin made the observations that lead, twenty years later, to his formulating the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. This book is Darwin's account of his observations on this voyage. Darwin was a master of detailed observation, and he describes the things he observed -- the plants, animals, geology, and people -- in loving detail. His accounts are always lively and full of interest. Darwin was also a master of inductive reasoning, and there are several superb examples of this in this book. Perhaps the finest is Darwin's induction of the cause of the formation of the coral atolls that dot the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean (his theory was proved correct in the 20th century). Indeed, much of the value of this book for the modern reader lies in the many examples it contains of scientific, inductive thought; a powerful method of reasoning that is as neglected today as it was in Darwin's time.

As I said, I had to read this for my Natural history class. My first thought were "Ohh Gawd, I bet this book will be about a page a hour. But it was really good. Not only do you learn about what he did, but how he thinks, and about the people and culture he visited at the time. So if you like natural history, this is a must read!!