Books: Timid Giant

CHARLES DARWIN — Geoffrey West —Yale University Press ($3.50).

Until he began gathering material for this biography, Author West shared the conventional view of his subject: Darwinism he took for granted; Darwin the man he regarded with "faint distaste" as a too typical Victorian. When he became better acquainted with his material, he changed his mind. He became fond of Darwin the man, and he made a shocking discovery about Darwinism. He discovered that Fascists, Communists and rugged individualists all claim direct descent from Darwin's theory of the Survival of the Fittest. What these monstrous descendants ignore, decided Author West, is that...

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