St George Jackson Mivart was an eminent biologist, who was at first an advocate for natural selection and later a passionate opponent. In this beautifully illustrated 1871 text, Mivart raised objections to natural selection as a means for evolution. These included problems in explaining: 'incipient stages' of complex structures (e.g. the mammalian eye); the existence of similar structures of divergent origin; dramatic and rapid changes in form; the absence of transitional forms from the fossil record; and issues in geological distribution. Citing the giraffe's neck, the rattle of the snake and the whale's baleen, Mivart argued for the necessity of an innate power underlying all organic life. Mivart's book did not seriously undermine the concept of natural selection - Darwin and Huxley soon countered his 'formidable array' of arguments - but it helped move the debate forward. Sadly, it also led to a rift between Mivart and Darwin.

Frederick George Jackson (1860 1938) set out on his expedition from Vaygach Island with two objectives: to test his equipment for a future voyage much further north, and to study the Samoyeds. Although his goals seemed straightforward, they proved more difficult than expected to achieve. After being left on the island ahead of schedule without most of his food supplies, and with no interpreter, he found that his principal bargaining tool was tea, and that many of the areas he had hoped to explore were too dangerous. This account of his experiences, first published in 1895, provides a glimpse into the seemingly insuperable difficulties of a nineteenth-century Arctic expedition, and the unflappable way in which Jackson dealt with them. Including notes on distraught lemmings, Samoyed customs, and the linguistic annotations of the editor, Arthur Montefiore, this entertaining book will interest historians and curious modern-day travellers alike.

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, "Soledad Brother" is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.