While much has been written about the life and works of Charles Darwin, the lives of his ten children remain largely unexamined. Most "Darwin books" consider his children as footnotes to the life of their famous father and close with the death of Charles Darwin. This is the only book that deals substantially with the lives of his children from their birth to their death, each in his or her own chapter. Tim Berra's Darwin and His Children: His Other Legacy explores Darwin's marriage to his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, a devout Unitarian, who worried that her husband's lack of faith would keep them apart in eternity, and describes the early death of three children of this consanguineous marriage. Many of the other children rose to prominence in their own fields. William Darwin became a banker and tended the Darwin family's substantial wealth. Henrietta Darwin edited Charles' books and wrote a biography of her mother. Three of Darwin's sons were knighted and elected Fellows of the Royal Society: Sir George Darwin was the world's expert on tides, Sir Francis Darwin developed the new field of plant physiology, and Sir Horace Darwin founded the world-class Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. Major Leonard Darwin was a military man, Member of Parliament, and patron of early genetic research. This book, richly illustrated with photographs of the Darwin family, demonstrates the intellectual atmosphere whirling about the Darwin household, portrays loving family relationships, and explores entertaining vignettes from their lives.

This clear, candid, and generously illustrated book is written for the open-minded reader who does not understand the technical issues of evolution, but would like to, who sees everywhere the signs of a bitter political, philosophical, and educational debate, but does not know what to make of it or who to believe. It tells how science proceeds, what evolution is, how science knows that it has occurred and continues to occur, and what biologists can point to, in fossils and in the living world, as hard evidence of evolution. For its content and foundations, the book draws on zoology, botany, genetics, embryology, geology, geophysics, cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, history, religion, and science education - everything expressed with a clarity that enables the general reader without a science background, as well as high school students and their teachers, to understand the argument.