Now after a 12-month scientific investigation, the story can be told. "An unforgettable experience...Must rank with the great classics of scientific revelation".--The New York Times.

    For five years in his mid-twenties, he sailed on the BEAGLE around the world, exploring jungles, climbing mountains, trekking across deserts. With every new landfall, he had new adventures: he rode through bandit country, was thrown into jail by revolutionaries, took part in an armed raid with marines, survived two earthquakes, hunted and fished. He suffered the terrible cold and rain of Tierra del Fuego, the merciless heat of the Australian outback and the inner pangs of heartbreak. He also made the discoveries that finally led him to formulate his theory of Natural Selection as the driving force of evolution. The five-year voyage of the BEAGLE was the basis for all Darwin's later work; but it also turned him from a friendly idler into the greatest scientist of his century. Kevin Jackson is a writer, broadcaster and film-maker. His most recent book is Constellation of Genius: 1922 and All That Jazz (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2013). He lives in Cambridge, England.

    A scientific evaluation of the evidence for and (mostly) against man’s evolution on Planet Earth, by a leading environmentalist and ecologist.Including:An evaluation of the thirteen leading hypothesesSeventeen factors which suggest we are not from EarthHow did we get here?When did we get here?What is our home planet like?The most likely stars that our home planet orbitsIf the aliens are out there why can’t we detect them?Are we the aliens?In this fascinating book Dr Ellis Silver provides answers to all of these questions, based on current evidence and thinking in the scientific community and elsewhere.