Passionate Darwinism

The year 2009 marked the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species. That year also saw the publication of more than 100 titles in English alone commemorating the man and his work. Evolution: The View from the Cottage was not among the crush.

This is a post-anniversary Darwin book, an updated translation published in English late last year of Jean-Pierre Rogel’s 2007 French-language book on evolution: L’hippopotame du Saint-Laurent (The Hippo in the Saint Lawrence). Rogel enlists his second home in Quebec’s Eastern Townships as a lens to view nature, a passage through evolutionary time in which the reader learns some fascinating facts about the loon (Gavia immer), moose (Alces alces), polar bear (Ursus maritimus), chimps (Pan troglydites), red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) and, in the process, us (Homo sapiens).

The...