A Modest Genius: The Story of Darwin’s Life and How His Ideas Changed Everything

Part biography, part popular science, A Modest Genius provides a lively, engaging account of Darwin's life and the events that inspired his groundbreaking theory. Science writer and biologist Hanne Strager brings Darwin to life while offering the essential elements of evolution and how they affect us today.

Much has been written on Darwin's life, his groundbreaking work, and the influence he has had on modern scientific thought and advancements, but most books assume a certain level of scientific knowledge. A Modest Genius changes that, offering an accessible, easy-to-understand discussion of Darwin's work.

Readers follow Darwin from his early years through his travels. Hanne Strager explains how Darwin assembled the pieces of a fascinating puzzle while also describing the fundamental principles of evolution.

Darwin's theory, by necessity, was incomplete when he proposed it. He lacked modern knowledge of the fossil record, DNA, and genetics. Strager explains how advances in these and other scientific areas expanded on Darwin's original work. She also discusses the ongoing conflict between religion and evolution, including the famous Scopes Monkey Trial and the battle Darwin himself fought between faith and intellect.

Bold, exciting, and easily understood, A Modest Genius offers an opportunity to understand one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the modern age.

Hailing from Denmark, Hanne Strager is a biologist and science writer. After receiving an education from the University Aarhus, Denmark, she studied at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as a Fulbright Scholar.

Strager cofounded a whale center in northern Norway and remains involved in cetacean research and conservation. She has served as the director of exhibitions at the Natural History Museum of Denmark and has twenty years’ experience making science and natural history accessible to the general public. In 2009, she was awarded the Copenhagen University Natural Sciences Faculty’s prize for science communication.

In addition to A Modest Genius, Strager is the author of Precious Things, a book revealing the many treasures within the Natural History Museum of Denmark.