A review by nwhyte
Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England by Steve Jones

4.0

An interesting book by geneticist Steve Jones. It's the fourth in a series about Darwin, reflecting his interests and updating them to the present day (which I think is about 2005); I haven't read the others, so I was missing some of the context. However, Darwin's thoughts on worms, barnacles, insects, insectivore plants, sexual selection and our facial expressions are interesting in themselves, and Jones' updating to current research is also pretty fascinating. I felt however that it lacked an overarching structure; the book is fairly granular, each chapter taking one (or more) of Darwin's publications on a particular subject, and linked to the others only in that Darwin cared about the topic. The title is provocative, making the point that the island that really mattered to Darwin was not one of the Galapagos archipelago but the one he was born, married and died on; but we don't get any corresponding exploration of Darwin's Englishness or Britishness. (I'd love to know where he stood on Irish issues, for instance.) It's also just a little out of date - Jones proclaims firmly that modern humans have no Neanderthal DNA, a view that was overturned in 2005. However, the writing is good and engaging, and I might look out for some of the earlier books in this series.