The Voyage of the Beagle (illustrated)

We are in 1839, Darwin just came back from a five years adventure around the world (Canary Islands, South America and Oceania) and is sharing his diary with us. This guy was madly in love with nature so this book is quite entertaining. He often says that cannot express his feeling while describing flora/fauna/geography but used words like: delight, pleasure, delicious, astonishment, remarkable and so on. Those are not words you would use to describe jungles. This is work of wild curiosity. Sometimes the text is even poetic but he is also honest saying things like “We are profoundly ignorant about the conditions of existence every animal”. But the show starts after the middle of the book right after his visit to the Galapagos Islands. You may have goosebumps when he makes the following note “I obtained sufficient materials to establish this most remarkable fact in the distribution of organic beings”. Twenty years later he writes “The Origin of Species” (1959) changing our view of life forever.

This a poor quality rendition of Darwin’s classic. It lacked any background information, preface or commentary. There were many missing illustrations. The print quality was poor, with no paragraph separations or indentations and large blank spaces on some pages. Spend a little more and get a much better rendition of this classic

I learned a lot about Darwin in this book that I simply didn't know beforehand. The most important is what an exceptional writer he was. If he had never published his Origin of Species and become famous by it, this book would still be a classic, if not of science, than certainly of literature. His prose, while necessarily more pedestrian, reminds me more than anything of the prose of another famous naturalist, Thoreau (who actually quotes the "Naturalist Darwin" in Walden from this book regarding the natives of Tierra Del Fuego).The "scientific detail" cited by another reviewer did not bog down the prose at all, a remarkable feat....a talent also found in Thoreau. The famed passage on The Galapagos was indeed interesting. But the most scientifically intriguing passages, I found, had to do with barrier reefs and atolls and how they come to be...I almost said "evolve"....But perhaps that would be premature for this book. In any event, I've never read a scientific account so riveting and fascinating as Darwin's on this subject given herein.But, as I say, I learned quite a bit about Darwin as a young man, ready for adventure, risks, and brimming with curiosity. He is almost as much a poet as scientist in some passages, quoting Shelley at one point, and he fortifies his narrative with a poignancy absent in most scientific accounts. This stylistic flavour is evident in many passages, but I'll just proffer one from the end of the narrative:"In my walk I stopped again and again to gaze upon these beauties, and endevoured to fix in my mind and for ever, an impression which at the time I knew sooner or later must fail. The form of the orange-tree, the cocoa-nut, the palm, the mango, the tree-fern, the banana, will remain clear and separate; but the thousand beauties which unite these into one perfect scene must fade away: yet they will leave, like a tale heard in childhood, a picture full of indistinct, but most beautiful figures." (P.444, in my edition)Whether as poetic or scientific, this work is virtuosic and unsurpassed in its seamless melding of the two. I'll leave the reader to decide which s/he enjoys the most.

I hadn't read it until now, and am enjoying it much much more than I thought that I would. What a treat to have access to the thoughts and writings from one of the most brilliant minds of modern times. Engaging, thoughtful and fascinating to see the observations that contribute to the eventual theory of evolution. Darwin seems like a delightful individual, and doesn't hesitate to poke fun at himself. One criticism: the formatting was dreadful in this version - the footnotes breakup the text. But it was free, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

This was not a bad book and it's certainly an important account of the Beagle's journey as told by it's most famous passenger (sorry FitzRoy) but what I had imagined as being more of an adventure turned out to be more like a textbook. Darwin has a great attention to detail and has good insights into what he observes, but the book reads very slowly. This may be more because of the journal source material than Darwin's writing itself but it's a hard read at times.I still recommend reading it at least once to life scientists and fans of exploration due to it's author's impact on the world and the fascinating era in which it takes place.

The reader of this edition, the great David Case, is wonderful. And of course Voyage is a great work, interesting on many levels, a glimpse of insight and genius to come.Some listeners think that a passage regarding the outrage of the ichneumon wasp paralyzing caterpillars and laying her eggs inside them is missing. It is not missing.In Voyage, near the end of Chapter 2, (it is a long passage, 4 or 5 paragraphs), Darwin does discuss this wasp, and her pursuit of a spider (totally creepy), and mentions that the wasp also paralyzes caterpillars and lays her eggs in them. But the connection between the survival strategy of the wasp to benevolent design is not discussed in Voyage in any edition, audio or paper. In Origin, Darwin writes that this phenomenon can't be consistent with benevolent design. Darwin expresses himself most clearly regarding the practices of this wasp and benevolent diety in a letter to Asa Gray written in 1860. The letter is quoted in numerous Wikipedia pieces on Darwin:"I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."

The text is absolutely what I was expecting. It is Darwin's account of his experiences on the voyage.It is fascinating and detailed.The book is illustrated.However, as far as I can tell, most of the illustrations are nothing to do with the text. Several are bizarre and very few are in any way relevant. How did the publisher get away with using them?

Very interesting and informative. This voyage had World Wide importance and kick-started the science of botany.

Good product ,look forward to reading it at Galapagos

As far as I can tell the book reproduces the original text of Darwin. However, the illustrations are strange and bear no relation to the text. The typesetting is also poor in that chapter headings have inappropriate gaps and spaces are left in the text for no apparent reason.

Excellent read, pity about the condition. Received the book & there was damage to the spine.