Nature Books

Wallace's 'Malay Archipelago' is a classic account of the travels of a Victorian naturalist through island Southeast Asia. It has been loved by readers ever since its publication in 1869. Despite numerous modern reprints with appreciative introductions, this is the first - and long overdue - annotated edition in English.This edition explains, updates and corrects the original text with an historical introduction, and hundreds of explanatory notes. Wallace left hundreds of people, places, publications and species unidentified. He referred to most species only with the scientific name current at the time. Whenever available, the common name for species have been provided, and scientific names updated. The 52 illustrations from the original edition are supplemented by 16 pages of newly-selected colour illustrations dating from the period.The content of the 'Malay Archipelago' has never been thoroughly analysed and compared against other contemporary sources. It turns out that the book contains many errors. This includes not just incorrect dates and place names but some of the most remarkable anecdotes; for example, the dramatic claim that tigers "kill on an average a Chinaman every day" in Singapore or that a Dutch Governor General committed suicide by leaping from a waterfall on Celebes.By correcting the text of the 'Malay Archipelago' against Wallace's letters and notebooks and other contemporary sources and by enriching it with modern identifications, this edition reveals Wallace's work as never before.

The proof for evolution is vast, varied, and magnificent, drawn from different fields of scientific inquiry. Todat, scientists are documenting species splitting into two, observing animals and plants adapting before our eyes,and finding more and more fossils capturing what happened eons ago--dinosaurs that have sprouted feathers, fish that have grown limbs. In this unique and accessible summary of the facts supporting the theory of natural selection, Jerry A. Coyne eloquently shows that evolution does nothing to destroy the beauty of life, only enhances it. By demonstrating the "indelible stamp" of the processes first proposed by Darwin, Coyne does not aim to prove creationism wrong. Rather, by using irrefutable evidence, it sets out to prove evolution right."OUTSTANDINGLY GOOD...COYNE'S KNOWLEDGE OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY IS PRODIGIOUS, HIS DEPLOYMENT OF IT AS MASTERFUL AS HIS TOUCH IS LIGHT." --RICHARD DAWKINS, THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

When the eminent naturalist Charles Darwin returned from South America on board the HMS Beagle in 1836, he brought with him the notes and evidence which would form the basis of his landmark theory of evolution of species by a process of natural selection. This theory, published as The Origin of Species in 1859, sparked a fierce scientific, religious, and philosophical debate which continues heatedly today. This seminal work is presented with The Voyage of the Beagle , a vivid travel memoir as well as a detailed scientific field journal. Ordered by place, covering area from Northern Chile to Australia to Cape Verde Islands, this text contains hints of the theories that were later developed in The Origin of Species .