In What about Darwin? the author, Thomas F. Glick, has drawn from a wide variety of sources including essays, short stories, poems and plays to give a picture of the influence of Darwin and his ideas on society and thinking of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Glick is already the author of a number of books on Darwin including Negotiating Darwin: The Vatican Confronts Evolution, 1877‐1902. In What about Darwin? Glick has compiled an impressive collection of extracts from literary works and other writings by notable individuals of the time.
The introduction, at just over twelve pages long, helps to set the scene and remind the reader of the key points, dates and discussions that followed Darwin. Glick says that throughout the book his aim was to “keep the mood light” and I felt he has achieved this through careful choice of informative and entertaining extracts such as “What's the bad news, Pop? Has another Fundamentalist been denying Darwin?” taken from The Plays of Eugene O'Neill.
The entries are organized alphabetically by the name of the author or individual quoted. These individuals are drawn from a wide range of backgrounds showing the influence of Darwin across society and include: diplomats, economists, engineers, historians, novelists, philosophers, poets, politicians, psychologists, scientists of various disciplines, and theologians. It is possible to trace associated individuals by asterisks (*) in the text alerting the reader to individuals mentioned elsewhere in the book. However, I felt this was a clumsy approach. The index is more useful in finding related topics or individuals and includes categories and topics such as anthropologists, finches, and predestination. Also included in the index are key publications from which extracts are taken, or publications which are mentioned in the extracts themselves, for example the ornithological journal The Ibis.
Glick provides both a varied and interesting collection of extracts showing not just the individuals' opinions of Darwin but also giving glimpses of the lives of the individuals themselves. For example, an extract from a letter by the English author Aldous Huxley to a friend read: “I've just bought a little house down here in the Mediterranean […] I hate living in big towns […] because French literary society is really a bit too literary and, owing to stringent economic conditions in the intellectual world, terribly Darwinian. If you want to see nature red in tooth and claw go to a French literary salon”.
I felt that missing from the book was some sort of narrative to assist the reader. The organization of entries alphabetically by name, while useful should you wish to find the opinion or works of a particular person on Darwin, does not help in developing a clear picture of Darwin's influence. Instead the reader has to browse the entries, or search the index for related entries and thus develop their own narrative.
At £15.50 the book is very reasonably priced but unfortunately without a narrative to guide the reader, I feel it will only appeal to the Darwin enthusiast or those with a keen interest in society and writings of that time.
