"The Origin" fills an important gap in literature on Charles Darwin. In 1832 at age 22, Charles Darwin was invited to sail with H.M.S. Beagle as a naturalist. The surveying voyage would encircle the globe. Five years later he returned to Plymouth as an experienced naturalist with a growing reputation in England, a priceless collection of rare and unknown plants and creatures, and a set of notebooks containing the germ of an idea about the origin of species..one that was to shake the foundations of accepted wisdom everywhere. This is not only the tale of the Beagle's cruise but the account of a lifetime of intellectual inquiry.