The Darwin Reckoning: Volume I – The Making of a Myth

Beginning with Darwin’s childhood and education, this volume follows the experiences that shaped the young naturalist: his troubled academic beginnings, his failed medical education, his years at Cambridge, and the voyage of the Beagle that transformed his reputation. The book then examines how Darwin’s theory developed, the intellectual influences surrounding it, and the controversy over Alfred Russel Wallace’s independent work on natural selection.

But this is more than a biography.

Basta examines Darwin’s scholarship, the sources behind his ideas, his prolonged illness, his changing views, and his attempt to explain heredity through pangenesis. The book also turns to the broader consequences of Darwinian thought, exploring Darwin’s views on race and women and tracing the connection between evolutionary ideas and the rise of eugenics.

Throughout, the author emphasizes documentation, primary sources, quotations, dates, scientific literature, and the historical record. Where evidence is disputed, the book identifies the dispute; where the creationist position faces difficult questions, those questions are acknowledged rather than ignored.

Written as an argument rather than a sermon, The Darwin Reckoning invites readers to examine the evidence and judge the case for themselves.

Whether you are a Christian reader, a student of the history of science, a skeptic, a pastor, a parent seeking documented answers, or simply someone interested in the historical foundations of evolutionary thought, this volume offers a provocative investigation into the man, the theory, and the legacy behind Darwinism.

Read the evidence. Examine the record. Decide for yourself.

The Darwin Reckoning is part of a six-volume series, but Volume I stands on its own with its own chapters, glossary, endnotes, and bibliography.