Evolution's Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands

Seattle Times

Splendid new book...an impeccable job...This book is diligently organized, written with great panache and dotted with memorable portraits.

BusinessWeek

. . . Larson nicely summarizes the history of evolutionary biology and some of the current scientific debates.

Library Journal

Highly recommended to lovers of biology for its scholarship and grand storytelling.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Edward Larson's training in both legal history and in the history of science serve him well...Larson unlocks the past and renders it gracefully accessible.

New York Times Book Review

An excellent cultural history.

Paul Raeburn

Evolutions Workshop by Edward J. Larson, a historian of science at the University of Georgia, is a book those visitors will want to take with them. It provides a fascinating narrative of the explorers, buccaneers, and socialites who have visited the islands. It tells of the scientists who followed in Darwin's footsteps- and Larson nicely summarizes the history of evolutionary biology and some of the current scientific debates. The volume also reports on efforts to protect the islands as nature reserves.
—Business Week

Seattle Post Intelligencer

. . .a fascinating examination of the historical importance of the Galapagos Islands (to Darwin and others), as well as current threats. . .

Seattle Times

[D]oes an impeccable job of telling both Darwin's story and that of the islands themselves. The book is diligently organized, written with great panache and dotted with memorable portraits of scientists, writers, buccaneers, millionaire yachtsmen and the occasional doomed pioneer-nudist.... Science writing at its best.

Washington Post Book World

. . . if you are going to the islands, by jet or by armchair . . . read Larson's book first.

Washington Post Book World

Larson belong[s] to the select roster of academic historians whose work can be read for pleasure. Evolution's Workshop is a welcome addition to any short shelf of essential Galápagos books.

Washington Times

Under Larson's deft writing style and insight, an adventure story has become no less than a philosophical exploration of the claims of evolution, of creation, and of how we try to live with both the beauty and awfulness of Nature.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The isolated Gal pagos Islands, lying on the equator 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador, have played a continuing roleone that Larson beautifully evokes herein studies of evolution ever since Charles Darwin spent his celebrated five weeks there in 1835. Larson, who received the Pulitzer Prize in history for Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, relates the islands' fascinating history since their discovery by a Spanish bishop in 1535. They soon became a sometime base for pirates, and, during the South Seas whaling boom of the late 1700s, English and American vessels fished the surrounding waters. English naturalists called attention to their unique plants and animals, which led to Darwin's visit on the Beagle. The young Herman Melville visited them six years later; he was much less favorably impressed. In the late 1800s, San Francisco-based scientific institutions like the newly founded Stanford University sent expeditions to bring back plants and animals, dead or alive (mostly dead). The American army dynamited an airstrip out of the volcanic rock to protect the Panama Canal during WWII. After the war, UNESCO took steps to protect the wildlife, which had been decimated over the centuries. In recent years tourism and the attendant influx of Ecuadorians have proved a dubious blessing for the islands' unique ecosystem, which still attracts scientists who travel there to study evolution at work, as well as creation scientists who hope to disprove it. The book contains two extensive photo galleries and is larded with drawings from old accounts of the islands, but it would have benefited immensely from a modern topographic map and photographs of the terrain. Nevertheless, Larson's first-rate history not only will entertain and engage lay readers but also is required reading for those seriously interested in Darwin, evolution or these remarkable islands. (May) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An absorbing study of the role of the South American island chain in shaping evolutionary theory. The desolate Galápagos Islands, writes historian Larson (Summer for the Gods, 1997), are today considered to be "a sacred site for science and a place of immense interest to biologists and eco-tourists alike." European explorers who came across the islands in the 16th century had a less exalted view of the rugged volcanic archipelago, noting on their maps and in their logs that they had seen a bit of hell on earth; even as late as the 19th century, Herman Melville would call the islands "evilly enchanted ground." Those who landed on the islands, as Charles Darwin would do on the five-year voyage of HMS Beagle, encountered odd, novel species that turned the notion of the great chain of being on its head. Some scientists preferred to ignore the giant tortoises and candle-like cacti of the place, which did not neatly fit into the prevailing natural history of the time, one that, one scientist wrote, "must devote itself to exhibiting evidence of divine design and material Providence." Others, like Darwin, were intrigued by the evolutionary patterns that emerged, whereby species exhibited perceptible differences from island to island, suggesting that geographical separation had some influence on the course of nature. Darwin's findings, and those of the generations of scientists who followed him, would undermine (but not kill) special-creationist accounts of how life came to be. Their arguments changed the face of science—and also of the islands, which gave up hundreds of thousands of specimens of birds, reptiles, and plants to collectors from museums all over the world. Whilelamentable, Larson suggests, their deaths gave rise to a new, epic story of evolutionary life. Thoughtfully conceived and expertly written, this is a good companion for travelers to the islands and students of the history of science alike.