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How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation
by Randall Fuller
The compelling story of the effect of Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species on a diverse group of American writers, abolitionists, and social reformers, including Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott, in 1860.
In early 1860, a single copy of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was read and discussed by five important American intellectuals who seized on the book's assertion of a common ancestry for all creatures as a powerful argument against slavery. The book first came into the hands of Harvard botanist Asa Gray, who would lead the fight for the theory in America. Gray passed his heavily annotated copy to the child welfare reformer Charles Loring Brace, who saw value in natural selection's premise that mankind was destined to progressive improvement. Brace then introduced the book to three other friends: Franklin Sanborn, a key supporter of the abolitionist John Brown, who grasped that Darwin's depiction of constant struggle and endless competition perfectly described America in 1860, especially the ongoing conflict between pro- and antislavery forces; the philosopher Bronson Alcott, who resisted Darwin's insights as a threat to transcendental idealism; and Henry David Thoreau, who used Darwin's theory to redirect the work he would pursue till the end of his life regarding species migration and the interconnectedness of nature.
The Book That Changed America offers a fascinating narrative account of these prominent figures as they grappled over the course of that year with Darwin's dangerous hypotheses. In doing so, it provides new perspectives on America prior to the Civil War, showing how Darwin's ideas become potent ammunition in the debate over slavery and helped advance the cause of abolition by giving it scientific credibility.
"Starred Review. Elegant writing and an unusual approach to interpreting the time period make this a must-read for everyone interested in Civil War–era history." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A fresh, invigorating history of philosophical and political struggles." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. This fascinating account is recommended for those interested in literature, science, or 18th-century American history." - Library Journal
"Randall Fuller has ingeniously combined these stories in this fascinating study of Darwin's impact especially on the Transcendental intelligentsia of Concord: Thoreau, Emerson, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May. These and other famous contemporaries emerge in a fresh perspective in this stimulating book. - James M. McPherson, author of The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters
"With its cast of vivid characters and the fate of the nation in the balance, Fuller's utterly convincing narrative gives science a starring role in the run up to the Civil War." - Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
"Randall Fuller makes Concord glow with this beautifully-written account of what happened in 1860 when somebody brought a new book along to a dinner party ... Fuller shows both the web of friendship through which scientific knowledge spread, and its inseparability from the politics of its day." - Michael Gorra, author of Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of An American Masterpiece
"Fuller's eye-opening account of the arrival of Darwin to America holds many surprises, above all that Origin of Species was greeted joyfully by its first American readers not as evolutionary science but as a revolutionary exposé of the racist thinking behind Southern slavery ... If you ever doubted that ideas can change the world - or if you ever wondered how - read this book!" - Laura Dassow Walls, author of the forthcoming Henry David Thoreau: A Life
"The Book That Changed America offers a lively, wide-ranging, informative account of the enthusiasm - and consternation - provoked by Darwin's masterpiece among his first influential American readers." - Lawrence Buell, Harvard University, Powell M Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus
"Randall Fuller has produced a vibrant and ingenious intellectual history of Civil War-era America by tracing the coterie circulation of a single copy of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species ... Fuller's beautifully written book promises to reignite a number of debates about evolution, the history of science, and the role of books and reading in the nineteenth century." - Coleman Hutchison, author of Apples and Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America
"This is one of the most original and important books on the Civil War era to appear in years. Brilliantly conceived and elegantly written, Randall Fuller shows how and why Darwin's Origin of Species emerged at the center of intellectual and cultural debates that transformed the nation." - John Stauffer, author of The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race
This information about The Book That Changed America was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Randall Fuller is the author of From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature, which won the Phi Beta Kappa's Christian Gauss Award for best literary criticism, and Emerson's Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the Chapman Professor of English at the University of Tulsa.
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