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For Charles Darwin, 2009 is a doubly significant year. First, if he had been fit enough to survive, he would be turning 200 in February. Second, it's the 150th anniversary of To the Edge of the World</em
<or</emry Thompson</p>
<date</emilable now</p>
<premise</ems action-packed first novel uses Darwin's journey on the HMS Beagle and tense friendship with its devoutly religious captain to explore the political and philosophical issues his theories raised. Sadly, Thompson, the Brit TV producer who discovered Sacha Baron Cohen, died just after the book was published.</p>
<Charlie would like it</em
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>### ls and Ages</a><or</emm Gopnik</p>
<date</emuary</p>
<premise</emeccentric double portrait of Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, both born February 12, 1809. They never met, but the two men were reluctant revolutionaries who rocked their world—and ours.</p>
<Charlie would like it</emrotic New Yorker writer Gopnik speculates freely on Darwin's abundant marital sex life (10 children!) and his tendency for crippling panic attacks.</p>
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>### Evolution Is True</a><or</emry A. Coyne</p>
<date</emuary</p>
<premise</emlowing up on his devastating 2005 takedown of intelligent design in The New Republic, Coyne gently and systematically assembles all the latest findings and cold hard data in one place.</p>
<Charlie would like it</emne is as graceful a stylist and as clear a scientific explainer as Darwin himself (no mean feat). It's one of the best single-volume introductions to evolutionary theory ever.</p>
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>### ution: The First Four Billion Years</a><or</emhael Ruse and Joseph Travis</p>
<date</emruary</p>
<premise</ems 1,000-page doorstop from Harvard University Press could function as an all-in- one textbook for introductory college courses.</p>
<Charlie would like it</emf essay collection, half encyclopedia, it's packed with everything you'll ever want or need to know about the science of evolution.</p>
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>### rkable Creatures</a><or</emn Carroll</p>
<date</emruary</p>
<premise</emwin wasn't the only scientist to hit the high seas. Carroll chronicles his own journey alongside other voyages of discovery that helped evolve the study of evolution.</p>
<Charlie would like it</emroll, a leading biologist, is one of the high priests of evo devo (evolutionary developmental biology), a field that's been revolutionizing our understanding of why we are the way we are.</p>
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>### in</a><or</emce B. McGinty</p>
<date</emil</p>
<premise</emugh aimed at the young evolutionary (ages 6 to 9), <em>in</ema surprisingly sophisticated biography, incorporating verbatim excerpts from the naturalist's own letters and diaries.</p>
<Charlie would like it</ems a concise, compelling children's introduction to a tricky and difficult subject. With meticulous source notes and an extensive bibliography, this is no <em>yone Poops</em>
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>### ature in the Cell</a><or</emphen C. Meyer</p>
<date</emy</p>
<premise</emationists' latest antievolution gambit is the theory of intelligent design, and Meyer is a leading evangelist. The nonscientist philosopher argues that the complexity and purposefulness of DNA as a kind of language <em>es</emt it cannot have resulted from random mutations.</p>
<Charlie would like it</emually, he'd hate it. If Meyer's previous work is any guide, this new volume will, at best, be more religion masquerading as pseudoscience.</p>
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