Thursday, February 26, 2009

Charles and Emma - The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman


"In the summer of 1838, in his rented rooms on Great Marlborough Street, London, Charles Darwin drew a line down the middle of a piece of scrap paper."

The abstract is hidden because it may contain spoilers. If you would like to read the full summary, simply use your cursor to highlight the next few lines and it will magically appear.

Abstract: Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma, were deeply in love and very supportive of each other, but their opinions often clashed. Emma was extremely religious, and Charles questioned God's very existence. Includes bibliographical references (p.260-262) and index.

Publisher: Henry Holt; 268 pages

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

According to Amazon, this book was released in 2008. Is it up for discussion this year?

Mary said...

Thanks for bringing this up. I thought that this title was a 2009 book, but I'm having a hard time putting my hands on a copy again. (All of our library's copies are currently checked out.) I've put a copy on hold and will check the copyrightin the actual book as soon as my hold comes in.

.. OR do any of you out there have a copy that you could check?

Kris said...

I have a copy checked out, it's publication date is 2009.

Mary said...

Thanks for checking, Kris!

Stephanie said...

I am curious about whether or not this is truly young adult. I felt it was more of an adult book than a young adult book.

I did think it was interesting and I learned alot about Darwin and his life, (as you should from a good biography).

I didn't think that it was amazing or anything new. It felt like every other biography I've ever read. Nice and interesting, but not Newbery

Anonymous said...

I thought this was a slow, somewhat repetitive book. I had a hard time getting through it. That being said, I did learn some new things about Darwin, and I appreciated the love he and his wife shared.

Jen said...

Discovering the religious ambivalence of Darwin made this a much more interesting read than a typical biography might have been. That said, I still don't think it will have a huge readership with kids. Children and teens who need a biography as part of their studies on Darwin will find some interesting facets to report, but it's no beach read.