Overview

In Darwinian Myths, Edward Caudill examines the ability of Darwin's theory to inspire legends, focusing particularly on the impact of social Darwinism on popular culture. This compelling testimony to the power of myth shows the ways in which, over the years, Darwin's ideas--twisted, truncated, and misapplied--have been appropriated by individuals, governments, and cultural elites to lend credibility to xenophobic, racist, and imperialist political movements and policies. Caudill uses newspaper and magazine accounts and correspondence to trace the myth-making and promotional efforts of Darwin himself, as well as the transformation of his empirically based theory into the philosophy of social Darwinism.

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9781572334526

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Ed Caudill is a retired journalism professor who taught at the University of Tennessee for more than 30 years. He spent summers meandering the country, and beyond, with his two sons, and in the school year he taught editing and history. At UT, his books earned him tenure and ire, being outside the usual academic dreariness of jargon-laden journals that no one read. Other books include: Intelligently Designed: How Creationists Built the Campaign Against Evolution; Sherman's March in Myth and Memory (co-author with Paul Ashdown); Inventing Custer: The Making of an American Legend (co-author with Paul Ashdown); The Myth of Nathan Bedford Forrest (co-author with Paul Ashdown); The Mosby Myth: A Confederate Hero in Life and Legend (co-authored with Paul Ashdown); Imagining Wild Bill: James Butler Hickok in War, Media and Memory (co-authored with Paul Ashdown). His co-edited works included four volumes of Vietnam Voices, collections of East Tennessee Vietnam veterans recollections of their war experiences: two volumes of Foothills Voices, remembrances of East Tennesseans. His numerous books have focused largely, but not exclusively, on American imagination and memory. With co-author and professor emeritus Paul Ashdown, those books have looked at Civil War figures. Caudill's other work have looked at the impact of Darwinism in American culture, from publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 through the 1925 Scopes Trial. He continues to write between road trips around the country, especially to places that offer good fly fishing from Georgia to Alaska.

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