3 Review(s)

In the 1950s, a British physician and amateur lepidopterist named H. B. D. Kettlewell went into the English woods to catch "evolution in action" among the now-famous Peppered Moths. His work became "Darwin's missing evidence," an evolutionary experiment as influential as any in the last century. Compellingly told, Of Moths and Men reveals Kettlewell to be a deluded scientist, a man tyrannized by his mentor, the powerful E. B. Ford, an imperious, eccentric Oxford don, a Darwinian zealot determined to crush all enemies in his path. In a revelatory, controversial work that will be debated for years to come, Judith Hooper uncovers the intellectual rivalries, petty jealousies, and faulty science behind one of the most famous experiments-and myths-in the history of evolutionary biology. Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.