Reviews
"...Eric Simons celebrates a refreshingly different Darwin: a twenty-something traveler fond of hurling iguanas into the sea and charging up any tall peak he could find...."
"...It's also hard to put Simons' book down - lighthearted adventures that keep a reader wanting more. But Simons is on his way as a writer; he'll be back....."
“Eric Simons has given us a bracingly fresh portrait of the Young Darwin, the man long ago lost behind the great white beard. Here is Darwin as only another young naturalist could find him, and to see the world through those avid eyes, groping for the theory that would explain all he has so brilliantly observed, is nothing less than exhilarating.”
"I used to read a lot of travel books before I caught the Darwin bug. But Eric Simons's book offers the best of both worlds: a travel book about following in Darwin's footsteps. It describes exactly the journey I have often contemplated making, were I but 20 years younger and 20 times more adventurous..."
"Too often we forget that major accomplishments often stem from youthful abandon. Twenty-something Charles Darwin had a rippin' good time mingling with South America's gauchos and iguanas. Discovering this inspired young Eric Simons to retrace the great naturalist's rambling tracks. The result is this wildly entertaining reminder that science and exploration can be a blast."
"Vivid and exotic, Eric Simons' tale invites comparisons to Chatwin as he leads readers among guanacos and ostriches, assasin bugs and armadillos, through rough seas swift currents, and ascending jungles. This is a book full of zest and discovery with the deeper mission of appreciating one of humankind's great breakthroughs in the understanding of our past."
"...Eric manages to provide new context for some of the defining events in Darwin’s young life and to retrieve many oft-overlooked aspects of Darwin-the-man, and his development, from caricatures of Darwin-the-scientist...."