Soon after publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received a letter that deeply unsettled him. He had expected outrage & accusations of heresy, but this letter was different: it accused him of taking credit for a theory that wasn`t his. Yet when he tried to trace his intellectual forebears, he found that history had already forgotten them... Rediscovering Aristotle on the shores of Lesbos & Leonardo da Vinci fossil hunting in the Tuscan hills, this is a masterful retelling of the collective daring of a few like-minded men, whose early theories flew in the face of prevailing political & religious orthodoxies & laid the foundations for Darwin`s revolutionary idea.