There has been a noticeable increase in the number of biographies of famous naturalists as of late. Not surprisingly, Charles Darwin is among those taken up as a subject of one of these books: Paul Johnson’s Darwin: Portrait of a Genius published by Penguin Press. A prolific writer with a bibliography running out to over forty books, not to mention innumerable other written work, Johnson’s portrait of Darwin is the latest in a string of his books examining the lives of well-known people, including Socrates, Jesus, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Sir Winston Churchill.

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