When HMS Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime. This title shows a naturalist making patient observations concerning geology, natural history, people, places and events.

This is a biography of Sir Joseph Banks, botanist, explorer, President of the Royal Society and one of Australia's founding fathers. He was among the most influential figures of the 18th and 19th centuries, accompanying Captain Cook on his voyage of discovery to Australia.

One of the most brilliant scientists of our age gives us his definitive work: a synthesis of his comprehensive vision of life.

In this new collection of essays, Gould has once again applied biographical perspectives to the illumination of key scientific concepts and their history, ranging from the origins of palaeontology to modern eugenics and genetic engineering.

Darwin's theory of natural selection is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological inter-relatedness revealing the almost unthinkably complex and mutual inter-dependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment and - by implication - the human world.