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Charles Darwin lived in fear of disgrace because of his views. He believed that humans were just a better sort of ape, that we evolved from worms. These were shattering ideas, especially from a man trained for the Church. Using new research, historians Adrian Desmond and James Moore see Darwin not as the far-sighted hero of the Beagle voyage, but as a privileged Victorian with everything to lose by publishing the heretical views he developed in survival-of-the-fittest London. Wracked with worry, Darwin was sick for most of the 20 years it took him to pluck up courage to tell the world his brutal theory of natural selection.
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