For more than thirty years-half his life-he was obsessively devoted to investigating Everything in the natural world. Nothing escaped his interest-how our eyes see, why the sky is blue, what forces build mountains, how light travels, where water comes from, and-most fascinating of all to Leonardo-the inner workings of the human body.

Before Freud, nobody discussed "unconscious" motives, Oedipal complexes, the id and the ego, or Freudian slips. Freud was a complicated, often irascible man, who in 19th-century Vienna developed his still-controversial ideas and the new discipline of psychoanalysis.

Traces the life and work of the British biologist made famous by his controversial theory of natural selection.