Darwin and the barnacle: the story of one tiny creature and history’s most spectacular scientific breakthrough.

In 1846, Charles Darwin has a secret: an essay sealed in an envelope and locked in his study drawer, which will overturn human understanding of time and nature forever. Now he must publish and take the consequences. But he hesitates. In this beautifully written and illustrated book, Rebecca Stott illuminates an age of discovery in which the natural world came to life as never before; how genius sometimes proceeds through indirection – and how one small item of curiosity contributed to history’s most spectacular scientific breakthrough.