“Compelling . . . Mr. Chaffin’s Odyssey presents a heroic adventure. His robust Darwin is an English Odysseus sailing a global wine-dark sea. . . . Chaffin’s Odyssey,” offers “new and exciting ideas that will likely beat out the competition.”—Robert M. Thorson, The Wall Street Journal
"Chaffin’s narrative of Darwin's Beagle travels makes the reader feel like we’re there with an extraordinary young man as he explores – and ultimately creates a theory that will explain -- the world. This is a well-told version of a great and enormously consequential adventure."—Warren D. Allmon, Cornell University, Professor of Paleontology, and Director, Paleontological Research Institution.
“In Odyssey, Tom Chaffin presents a crisp and colorful narrative of Charles Darwin’s seminal voyage on the HMS Beagle, frequently and advantageously animated by Darwin’s own words. It is a vivid and insightful account of Darwin’s experiences and observations leading to his world-shattering theory of natural selection.”—Rob Wesson, Author, Darwin’s First Theory
Historian and biographer Tom Chaffin is the author, most recently, of "Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and the Voyage that Changed the World" (Pegasus Books, 2022). The work chronicles Darwin's five years of travels associated with HMS Beagle, a circumnavigation during which the naturalist often left the ship to conduct extensive overland journeys. Chaffin's other books include "Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship that Helped Forge Two Nations," "Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire" and "Sea of Gray: The Around-The-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah."
Chaffin (B.A, English, Georgia State University; M.A., American Studies, New York University; Ph.D., history, Emory University) grew up in Atlanta and spent his early professional years in journalism, living in, among other places, New York City, San Francisco, and Paris. His writings have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Time, Harper's, the Oxford American, and other publications. He was a frequent contributor to the New York Times' acclaimed "Disunion" series on the American Civil War. A 2012 Fulbright fellow in Ireland, he lives in Atlanta.(author photo, Meta Larsson).
