Darwin's armada: how four voyagers to Australasia won the battle for evolution and changed the world.

Camberwell: Penguin Books, 2009.
Octavo, dustwrapper, 424 pp. colour illustrations.

A gripping adventure story and a brilliantly enlightening work of history, for the first time portraying the Darwinian revolution as a collective enterprise forged in Australasia by Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. These four remarkable men did what one alone could not – combed the world for evidence of evolution by natural selection, and then fought tirelessly in the social and intellectual battle that followed its famous publication 150 years ago.

Reviews:

'This is a wondrous story told by the most of eloquent of story-tellers. Iain McCalman has all the gifts: he unearths buried threads; distills complex thought, ambition, emotion and pure chance; tempers wit and irony with wonder; finds drama in profound ideas.' - Don Watson

'What a fine book this is! Deeply researched, skilfully constructed and written with engaging flair. It provides us with a memorable and often moving account of the greatest scientific achievements and momentous controversies of the nineteenth century.' - Henry Reynolds

'Darwin's Armada is a splendid achievement. Iain McCalman combines fine scholarship with enchanting narrative, the prose taut and vivid as he charts the course of the captain and his lieutenants toward the theory of evolution. Original in perspective, powerful in form, delightful in the reading.' - Peter Cochrane

'A fabulous account of the intertwined sea voyages which launched Darwinism. Like few other historians, but much like Charles Darwin himself, Iain McCalman has that happy combination of talents – rigorous accuracy, gleeful irreverence and narrative flair – which turns fact into something better than fiction.' - John Collee, scriptwriter, Master and Commander

'Darwinian history at its best… Combining a freshness of approach, highly readable text, and exceptional academic rigour, Professor McCalman brings alive one of the greatest stories of scientific discovery.' - Professor Stephen Hopper, Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

'Our understanding of the origins of evolutionary theory itself evolves. Here is a fresh, lively account not just of Darwin but of a scientific cell, four men bound together by their discoveries in the southern hemisphere and their shared experience of life at sea.' - John Hirst.