Randall Fuller's The Book That Changed America

Randall Fuller, the author of The Book That Changed America How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation explains the initial reaction that people had of Charles Darwin’s book On The Origin of Species. Darwin’s book was used for anti-slavery activist to prove that all humans are biologically related. Within Darwin’s book his theory of evolution provided the facts of survival of the fittest, and genetically or biologically linked. Fuller’s book captured five extraordinary thinkers and how the book affects their life and passion in science. The five scholars became involved in Darwin’s book because Asa Gray sent Charles Loring Brace a copy of “his heavily annotated book” (Fuller, pg. ix), Darwin’s book On The Origin of Species. Then Brace

He traveled through the woods of Oneida County and Adirondacks, and collected ferns and flowers from the Erie Canal. In the 1830s, Congress funded “amateur geologists, zoologists, and botanists” (Fuller pg. 15) to survey the coasts and interiors of the nation’s natural habitats. Gray was a part of the Wilkes Expedition exploration at the age of twenty-eight, and returned four years later, subsequently hired at Harvard for his taxonomic gifts. Gray’s contained a unique gift to identified, categorized, and name botanical specimen. He was not just a scientist, but a religious man, who was able to keep a compatible relationship between both topics. He viewed science as a cause and effect, and religion dealt with invisible force. Then Gray became the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard. In mid-december about a week before Christmas Gray received Darwin’s book as an early Christmas gift and, he already had known about Darwin’s theory. When he encountered “the theory in print was more powerful than he anticipated” (Fuller pg. 16). Gray immersed himself in Darwin’s book. The book’s margin was occupied with notes and markings. Gray was the one who sent his annotated copy of Darwin’s book to Charles Loring Brace. Gray’s relationship with Charles Brace Loring is a cousin by marriage. Soon, Brace would share the copy of Gray’s annotated version of Darwin’s book to a fellow