Darwin's Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists - Hardcover

Extraordinarily wide-ranging and engaging ... Stott's gifts as a novelist mean that each of her subjects emerges as living in ordinary weather and among objects, family and political difficulties ... She draws on an array of scholarship and assembles it into an intricate sequence of stories and investigations that are her own ... Gripping (Gillian Beer, The Sunday Telegraph)

Riveting ... told with style and historical nous ... Stott has done a wonderful job in showing just how many extraordinary people had speculated on where we came from before the great theorist dispelled any doubts (Richard Fortey, Guardian)

A fascinating history of an idea that is crucial to our understand of life on earth (Ziauddin Sardar, Independent)

***** Mesmerising, colourful and often moving ... a richly drawn exploration of the key figures on Darwin's list ... this many threaded story of intellectual development is hypnotic. The subject is science, but Stott has a novelist's confidence ... this is a sympathetic examination of the innate human qualities of curiosity and inquiry (Daily Telegraph)

Thrilling ... impressively researched ... A gripping and ambitious history of science which gives a vivid sense of just how many forebears Darwin had; even if none of them can match the man himself (Sunday Times)

Rebecca Stott's beautifully written and compelling book is the story of some of the men - and they were all men - who came before, and how the evolution of their ideas mirrors the evolution of species ... These mavericks and heretics put their lives on the line. Finally, they are getting the credit they deserve (Independent on Sunday)

Clever, compassionate and compellingly written, Stott has interwoven history and science to enchanting effect. The evolution of the theory of evolution is a brilliant idea for a book, and she has realised it wonderfully (Tom Holland)

Stott's research is broad and unerring; her book is wonderful ... An exhilerating romp through 2,000 years of fascinating scientific history (Nature)

From Aristotle onwards, evolutionists have - thank God - always been a quarrelsome lot; and not much has changed. Rebecca Stott shows how dispute, prejudice and rage have accompanied their science from the very beginning. Darwin's Ghosts is a gripping history of the history of life and of those who have studied it, with plenty of lessons for today - perhaps for today's biologists most of all (Steve Jones)

A masterful retelling of the collective daring of a few like-minded men who had the courage to publish their speculations at a time when to do so, for political as well as religious reasons, was to risk everything. It is the story of an idea that would change the modern world (Observer)