Charles William Eliot

The riveting firsthand account of the historic voyage that led to the theory of evolution When the HMS Beagle set sail in 1831, the science of biology was not far removed from the Dark Ages. When the ship returned to England nearly five years later, Charles Darwin had the makings of a theory that would revolutionize our understanding of the natural world. From volcanoes in the Galapagos to the coral reefs of Australia, The Voyage of the Beagle documents...

Although published nearly 400 years ago in Spanish, this parody of the chivalrous life remains amazingly familiar in translation today-perhaps from the extensive influence it has played on novelists, playwrights and even composers over the centuries, or perhaps from its eternal story of the childlike and comic view of a decayed world by a madman stuck in a golden past.