نبذه عن الكتاب: On September 15, 1835, a small ship called the Beagle sailed toward a cluster of islands that lie scattered across the equator in the Pacific Ocean, some 600 miles off the west coast of South America. Aboard the Beagle a young scientist named Charles Darwin eagerly awaited a glimpse of land. The first island he saw, however, was a disappointment. “Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance,” he wrote in his journal. The landscape was a broken field of black lava, rising in rugged peaks that were gouged by deep, gaping crevasses. A few stunted, leafless bushes were the only signs of life. Robert FitzRoy, the Beagle’s captain, compared the hot, desolate island to hell, and Darwin wrote, “The dry and parched surface, being heated by the noonday sun, gave to the air a close and sultry feeling, like that from a stove: we fancied even that the bushes smelt unpleasantly.” This was Darwin’s introduction to the Galápagos Islands. Dismal and lifeless as they seemed at first, these islands were to play a vital role in Darwin’s work— work that would revolutionize humankind’s understanding of life on this planet.