Bringing It All Back Home

A very brief post to highlight a review of Darwin in Scotland recently brought to my attention by Michael Barton (a.k.a. Darwin’s Bulldog). There are ironies to do with the review that I cannot divulge but, while several reviewers have clearly missed the point of the book (e.g., as documented in Insult to Human Intelligence, Reviewing the Situation, etc.), it took a reviewer from the University of Cambridge (UK) to “get it”.

Cambridge is most often held as the global centre of Darwin study, and that is why I spent several attempts over several years trying to enthuse Cambridge University Press (CUP) about my Darwin-related books. This involved their reviewers assessing each book proposal and sample chapters that I sent them, the majority returning very favourable comments. So much so, that it is still a complete mystery why the editors decided against their reviewers, if that is the system that they trust. <Puts on Basil Fawlty voice> “I mean what is the point?”

Also surprising, was that although it’s a relatively easy task to find out someone’s publishing history, bread and butter to an academic, CUP seemed unable to locate any of my 8 Darwin/evolution papers between 2008-9 in any of the many citations indexes, find me via any university websites, nor generally Google my arse.

Thus, it is with both a sense of irony, and a feeling of having brought at least some of my writing on Darwin full circle, that I present with pride, pleasure and deep gratitude to it’s author Lyall Anderson, his review of Darwin in Scotland. Thank you Lyall.

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