Darwin Slept Here

Description

One snowy day in Ushuaia, Argentina, the self-proclaimed 'southernmost city in the world,' at the end of a long trip designed to put as much distance between himself and a frustrating job as possible, writer Eric Simons picked up a copy of Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. Simons had just hiked the mountains overlooking Beagle Channel, and found himself engrossed in Darwin's account. Like Simons, Darwin was in his mid-twenties when he travelled to the continent, having joined a five-year expedition to survey and map the coastline of South America, as the expedition's naturalist. Simons found himself compelled to follow Darwin further into South America - to stand where Darwin had, and to explore the landscapes, legends and people that had fascinated Darwin two centuries before. Simons trekked to as many of the locations Darwin wrote about as he could find, to see if he could see these places through Darwin's eyes, and to see what South Americans know about Darwin. Part travelogue, part insight into one of the greatest scientific minds in history, Darwin Slept Here will fascinate and enthral.

Eric Simons is a graduate of the science writing program at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He has written for newspapers and magazines including the LA Times. He lives in San Francisco.

Eric Simons has given us a bracingly fresh portrait of the young Darwin, the man long ago lost behind the great white beard. Here is Darwin as only another young naturalist could find him, and to see the world through those avid eyes, groping for the theory that would explain all he has so brilliantly observed, is nothing less than exhilarating. -- Michael Pollen author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma 'Vivid and exotic' Eric Simons' tale invites comparisons to Chatwin as he leads readers among guanacos and ostriches, assassin bugs and armadillos, through rough seas, swift currents and ascending jungles. This is a book full of zest and discovery with the deeper mission of appreciating one of humankind's great breakthroughs in the understanding of our past. -- Lou Ureneck, author of Backcast