On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection (Hackett Classics) - Hardcover

Provides a magisterial overview of all of Darwin's ideas in a brief and useful format. This book will become the mainstay of the courses I teach related to Darwin. --Timothy Lenoir, Stanford University An excellent selection. There is nothing else like it available in print, and the price makes it very attractive for use in courses. . . . overall the editors did a superb job of choosing those excerpts from Darwin's published works and his correspondence and notebooks that will give the reader a sense of the full range of his interests and the substance of his ideas. The editorial remarks are . . . perceptive and directly relevant to the content. --Gene Cittadino, New York University This is simply an outstanding volume . . . exactly what I was looking for. I especially appreciate the inclusion of the Malthus and Wallace, plus the notebook selections. I don't know of another Darwin anthology that does this. It fills a real need. --Lynn K. Nyhart, University of Wisconsin

Designed for use in a broad range of courses in the humanities, Darwin's theory is laid out in a concise general Introduction and followed up in short chapter introductions. Each chapter concludes with an excerpt from Darwin's correspondence, commenting on the work in question, and its significance, impact, and reception. Two short appendixes are includedathe first three chapters from Malthus, On Population, which gave Darwin the idea for natural selection and the paper by Wallace that motivated Darwin to abandon the Big Species Book and write Origin of Species.