About this item
A compelling portrait of a unique moment in American history when the ideas of Charles Darwin reshaped American notions about nature, religion, science and race"A lively and informative history." - The New York Times Book ReviewThroughout its history America has been torn in two by debates over ideals and beliefs. Randall Fuller takes us back to one of those turning points, in 1860, with the story of the influence of Charles Darwin's just-published On the Origin of Species on five American intellectuals, including Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, the child welfare reformer Charles Loring Brace, and the abolitionist Franklin Sanborn. Each of these figures seized on the book's assertion of a common ancestry for all creatures as a powerful argument against slavery, one that helped provide scientific credibility to the cause of abolition.
About the Author
RANDALL FULLER is the Herman Melville Distinguished Professor of Nineteenth-Century American Literature at the University of Kansas and the author of Emerson's Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists; From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature; and The Book that Changed America: How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation. Currently he is working on a book about Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and the treacherous world of London theater. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, Juliet.
