"It is a testimony to the mythical status of Charles Darwin that most of his admirers do not know or do not take seriously the fact that Origin of Species was sold as an abstract of a much longer work. Reviewers of Origin took Darwin at his word and cut him considerable slack when evaluating the case for evolution by natural selection. The promised volume would presumably explain the modus operandi of this mysterious process. However, the promised volume never came, though a hefty manuscript survived its author. Robert Shedinger takes a deep dive into Darwin's correspondence, as well as the unfinished follow-up manuscript, and concludes that Darwin abandoned the project simply because he couldn't meet the objections to natural selection made even by broadly sympathetic reviewers of Origin. In addition, Shedinger casts a forensic eye on how scholarly interpretations of Darwin's life have subtly served to obscure this ultimate intellectual failure. The result is nothing short of a demythologization of modern biology's origin story."
-Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Professor of Social Epistemology, University of Warwick, author of Dissent over Descent
"Darwin's Bluff particularly resonates with me. In 2009, as a card-carrying Darwinist serving as a fossil curator in one of Germany's natural history museums, I mounted an exhibit showing Darwin's famous work outweighing the works of his leading modern detractors. To prepare for hard questions from reporters, I decided to give the naysayer books a quick read, books I had been assured were all froth and foolishness. I soon discovered that I had been misled. The arguments in those pages were neither shallow nor illogical. Instead, I came to see that it was actually modern Darwinism that rested on a carefully constructed bluff.
Robert Shedinger's latest book shows that the bluffing has a long pedigree, stretching back to the master of Down House himself. What emerges from Shedinger's deep dive into Darwin's private writings is a picture of a man wracked by doubts and insecurities about his evolutionary theory, but also a man not above a good bluff, one he sold so artfully that he may even have persuaded himself."
-Gunter Bechly, former curator for amber and fossil insects in the Department of Paleontology at the State Museum of Natural History (SMNS) in Stuttgart, Germany; Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture
"Robert Shedinger's fascinating book explores a puzzling question about Darwin's career: Why didn't he ever publish a longer book on evolution by natural selection that he had almost completed? Darwin continually promised his contemporaries that his forthcoming work would provide the evidence he was unable to include in his shorter book, The Origin of Species, which he called an "abstract" of his theory. Through painstaking historical research, Shedinger sheds light on Darwin's modus operandi and on the shortcomings of his scientific evidence, thus dismantling what Shedinger calls the mythology surrounding Darwin."
-Richard Weikart, Professor of History, California State University, Stanislaus; author of Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism
