The Origin of Species
The single most influential scientific book ever written.
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this p...”
Why It Matters
The single most influential scientific book ever written. Darwin's natural selection completed the Copernican revolution, displacing humanity from the center of biology as Copernicus had displaced earth from the center of the cosmos. The argument's elegance and its accumulating empirical weight make Origin a model of scientific writing as well as scientific theory.
The 
Take
Personal reviewAwesome intuition and evidential rigor. Even without decent knowledge of genetics/dna and experimental evidence on the trickiest cases, Darwin reasons incredibly well, even when imperfectly. The “spirit” of the idea of evolution is awesome and just so explanatory with minimal evidence. The writing was quite clear and clinical
Notable Quotes
“I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.”
“Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”