Bill Bryson has an excellent way with words, especially with his descriptive writing. For a travel writer, I suppose this is a must. He's also a humorist, and I laughed out loud on at least a half a dozen occasions while enjoying his adventures down under. Particularly amusing were his descriptions of a Cricket match, of a particularly bad hotel in Darwin and and of a drunken night in the Outback. He also gives a fine overall view of Austrailia, of which he covered much, but alas not nearly as much as he wanted.
Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology
This anthology brings together a generous selection of scientific and literary material to explore the exchanges and interactions between them. It shows how scientists and creative writers alike fed from a common imagination in their language, style, metaphors and imagery. It includes writing by Michael Faraday, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Hardy, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain and many others.
History at its best--the great stories of England's modern age, distilled in Robert Lacey's inimitable style. From William and Mary to Watson and Crick, Robert Lacey's newest volume offers up the most delightful and intriguing English tales of the last few centuries. Royal families and renowned scientists, highwaymen and war heroes--the most colorful characters of modern English history are here. Samuel Johnson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill--these are but a few of the famous characters to grace the pages of volume three.
The autobiography of the British naturalist Charles Darwin which was published in 1887, five years after his death. Darwin wrote the book, which he entitled Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character, for his family. He states that he started writing it on about May 28, 1876 and had finished it by August 3.
The publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 was the culmination of more than 20 years of work by Charles Darwin, and the ideas he presented in it would lead to a fundamental change in the way we think about life on earth. Evolution was controversial at the time and now, as the bicentenary of Darwin's birth approaches in 2009, it remains the subject of bitter argument. As revolutionary as the theory was, it did not come out of thin air, but developed within the context of the scientific and philosophical thinking of the period.
