Product Description

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is the most important and yet least read scientific work in the history of science. Now James T. Costa—experienced field biologist, theorist on the evolution of insect sociality, and passionate advocate for teaching Darwin with Darwin in a society where a significant proportion of adults believe that life on earth has been created in its present form within the last 10,000 years—has given a new voice to this epochal work. By leading readers line by line through the Origin, Costa brings evolution’s foundational text to life for a new generation.

The Annotated Origin is the edition of Darwin’s masterwork used in Costa’s course at Western Carolina University and in Harvard’s Darwin Summer Course at Oxford. A facsimile of the first edition of 1859 is accompanied by Costa’s extensive marginal annotations, drawing on his extensive experience with Darwin’s ideas in the field, lab, and classroom. This edition makes available an accessible, useful, and practical resource for anyone reading the Origin for the first time or for those who want to reread it with the insights and perspective that a working biologist can provide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44718 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 576 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780674032811
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Costa, professor of biology at Western Carolina University, does a wonderful job of annotating Darwin's groundbreaking classic On the Origin of Species. In more than 900 notes, he explains, expands, contextualizes and updates much of what Darwin had to say about evolution and its causes. For example, throughout the Origin, Darwin briefly referenced many informants; Costa provides background information on each of those individuals. He also directs readers to places in Darwin's earlier writings that presage points made in the Origin. When discussing what Darwin terms [o]rgans of extreme perfection and complication, he focused on the evolution of the vertebrate eye. Costa explains the logic Darwin used and how modern biological studies have supported Darwin's contentions, concluding that his insight underlies modern phylogenetic reconstruction. In a brief Coda, Costa summarizes the changes Darwin made to the Origin in its six editions and the reasons for them. Costa's thoughtful and informative notes enable readers to gain a much fuller appreciation for Darwin's genius and breadth of knowledge—a fine tribute in the great scientist's bicentennial year. (May)
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Review
On the Origin of Species has too long been one of those worthy books whose fate is to be lauded but unread. Jim Costa's deft commentary--an authoritative and engaging mix of history and science--will change that. The Origin is forbidding and inaccessible no longer--it has evolved! The Annotated Origin of Species restores, for modern readers, the freshness and excitement that made it a bestseller when it first appeared. Charles Darwin, I'm sure, couldn't wish for a better 200th birthday present.
--Andrew Berry, editor of Infinite Tropics, An Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology (20090309)

Despite being 150 years old, the Origin is a living text for biologists. It is full of unsurpassed natural history observations, a model of careful scientific argument that still can catch the imagination with the grandeur of the views it puts forward. Jim Costa has provided an exceptionally lucid explanation.
--Janet Browne, author of Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (20091101)

Brilliant.
--Bernd Heinrich, author of The Snoring Bird: My Family's Journey Through a Century of Biology (20091029)

The Annotated Origin is a culminating and, in an original manner of its own, the most useful of the centennial Darwin publications. It gives you the choice of reading page by page the original Origin, or its modern interpretation, or both together.
--Edward O. Wilson (20090927)

Costa does a wonderful job of annotating Darwin's groundbreaking classic On the Origin of Species. In more than 900 notes, he explains, expands, contextualizes and updates much of what Darwin had to say about evolution and its causes...Costa's thoughtful and informative notes enable readers to gain a much fuller appreciation for Darwin's genius and breadth of knowledge--a fine tribute in the great scientist's bicentennial year. (Publishers Weekly 20091111)

Clearly worth attention...Costa makes use of his experience as a field naturalist and his knowledge of the modern literature of evolutionary biology to illumine many passages in Darwin's work.
--Richard C. Lewontin (New York Review of Books )

Everyone knows about [On the Origin of Species], but I venture to guess that few non-scholars have actually read it. Now, along comes James T. Costa with this facsimile. The index to the new edition, and especially Costa's wonderful annotations, make this classic text not only approachable, but positively inviting...Biologists will probably enjoy this book, but it is a particular gift to laypeople, especially to biology teachers. They can take excerpts from the book into their classes and show their students how Charles Darwin arrived at his insightful and revolutionizing idea.
--Dudley Barlow (Education Digest )

The Annotated Origin should be on the shelf of every practitioner of the life sciences. James T. Costa has rendered a valuable service to the profession by making the single most influential work in the history of biology both accessible and relevant to modern readers. Costa is aware that most students of biological science have at best merely glanced at Darwin's great book, but certainly have never read it through. By making visible what he calls the breathtaking sweep of Darwin's method, he has made a compelling argument for taking a page from Darwin's playbook in making the case for biological evolution...Darwin has sometimes been portrayed as a plodding scientist, a good observer whose second-rate status is masked by the pregnancy of the grand idea he stumbled upon. Costa's work is a wonderful refutation of this portrait. No one who follows Costa through The Annotated Origin can possibly doubt Darwin's exceptional stature. There is no better tribute he could have made for this celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterpiece.
--Frederick Gregory (BioScience )

It's entirely possible--I think it's likely--that when the overwhelming and heartwarming cascade of attention to the 2009 anniversary of Darwin's 1809 birth and 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species has at last subsided, the palm for Best in Show will go to James Costa's beautifully-produced and scrupulously, joyously annotated version of the Origin. The idea is so simple that it flies considerably below the fray of mammoth biographies and shrill pie-fights with the so-called "New Atheists": take the text of one of the most seminal and subversive books ever written, and add a thoroughly informed and entertaining running commentary. This is exactly what Costa does, and it bears all the marks of being a labor of love...This is the finest book of its kind ever produced. It should tide you over quite well until 2059.
--Steve Donoghue (openlettersmothly.com )

I should like to recommend the best, and most informative book to emerge from the [Darwin Year] extravaganza. It merits reading with complete attention, for it is also a fairly honest book, presenting Darwin in his historical context, and in the evolution of his own thinking, while drawing lines of connection, wherever they can be found, between the original insights and the best lab and field work of "neo-Darwinism" today. The book is by James T. Costa, entitled The Annotated Origin. The first edition of Origin of Species is reprinted on wide pages with annotations down the outside columns. There are supplementary aids, including an excellent biographical directory of Darwin's predecessors and contemporaries. No one seriously interested in Darwinian phenomena should dare not to buy this book.
--David Warren (Ottawa Citizen )

Ably edited by James Costa, The Annotated Origin contains many of the annotations that the original Origin of Species lacked, and provides the reader with a comprehensive grounding in the natural history that Darwin marshaled in support of his revolutionary theory.
--Allen MacNeill (evolutionlist.blogspot.com )

About the Author
James T. Costa is Executive Director of the Highlands Biological Station and is Professor of Biology at Western Carolina University.

Customer Reviews

The "Origin" Made Far More Accesible For Ordinary Readers
It's both wonderful and too bad that there are now two such excellent versions of "On the Origin of Species" competing for non-specialist readers: this one and the lavishly-illustrated version edited by David Quammen (which see).

Professor James T. Costa, who edited this book and prepared the annotations, is a biologist himself and an insightful student of Darwin. This very useful book makes the "Origin" far easier to understand for the general reader. It presents a facsimile of the first edition of Darwin's classic volume (accepted as the most passionate and unalloyed version of Darwin's original views, compared to the five versions that he oversaw subsequently) in a broad format: on each page, the text is on one hand and lying next to it is commentary and interpretation by Professor Costa. The result is a handsome edition with thought-provoking insights that vastly enhance the reader's interest and understanding. Each comment is keyed to the pertinent place in the text to which it refers by the use of an arrow and the comments provide a gloss, as it were, on those passages. Costa summarizes, explains and points out what is coming up, indicates where the same themes or ideas reappear, offers valuable present-day perspectives on what Darwin is saying, and so forth.

To take just one signal example, Costa explains what may puzzle many readers, namely, why Darwin starts out with a discussion of plants and animals under domestication. His comments reduce the confusion people feel (I know I did, initially) when they start reading, thus making it likelier that general readers will not be confused and put off by the book from the outset. The reader is thus helpfully guided through Darwin's seminal work by a companionable expert.

Costa has prepared a worthwhile introduction in which he discloses his ambition that this edition will help to persuade modern students to read Darwin's original book, thereby enhancing understanding (and preventing misunderstanding) of evolution. He also laments and is perplexed by the fact that Americans seem so inclined to litigate over whether such widely accepted science can be taught in public schools. I gather he hopes by this edition to forestall some of the misunderstanding that can give rise to such litigation.

I hope Costa succeeds.

A set of biographical notes helps readers understand Darwin's references to other people and indicates where in the text one will find those references. I also inspected the bibliography and found it substantial and helpful as well, if a bit on the individualistic side.

This is an attractive volume, stylishly presented by Harvard University's Belknap Press. There are no illustrations or diagrams apart from those found in the original first edition, however. The price is reasonable. Although I already have several editions of "On the Origin of Species," I was quick to buy this one. As a non-specialist, I have found the annotations extremely helpful, informative, and even entertaining.

Reading Darwin carefully
Reading Darwin is far from painful since he does write clearly and often engagingly. The annotations are quite good although as is always the case they can be distracting as one loses the argument by stopping to read the annotations. That said, for anyone with more than a passing interest in evolution, the annotations provide background information and often help to elucidation his complex arguments. I found them most helpful and interesting. They help the reader to see an interesting and creative mind at work which is really the only reason to read Darwin today given modern additions to evolutionary theory. Layout is also quite good. Readers should know that this is the 1st edition (of 6 as I recall). Later editions had non-trivial additions and subtractions, but unfortunately they also soft-peddled some of the more extreme (and often correct) arguments, presumably because he was responding to real and imagined criticism. The general reader shouldn't be bothered by edition issues. I hadn't read Origin of Species in several years, and have enjoyed the experience again, but it takes some real work. Not airplane reading. Although there are much less expensive editions available this is the one to have.

Outstanding
Received an advance copy of this book.

Apart from the odd cover-art, this is a truly beautiful book, cloth bound in bold orange color with gold embossed title on spine, very well bound, well printed on heavy/creamy paper stock.

The preface is an excellent overview of CD's life & work, and the annotations are worth owning.