Over dinner a friend casually mentioned that he is reading Darwin: Portrait of a Genius. He was impressed with how the book captured the genius of Darwin’s work and how that genius was created through a combination of factors.

And indeed, the book does a good job of this. It’s not a book that is a typical biography of a famous person — it seldom attempts to get into the soul of the subject, for instance. There is little conversation about Darwin’s childhood or the factors that created his motivations. And though it covers the controversies surrounding Darwin’s theories, it does not dwell on them.

The result is a book that provides a simple yet informative overview of Darwin’s life, with a special focus on the insights Darwin had that allow us to classify him as a genius. This is a good book to read if you want to have a working knowledge of the man and his ideas. At just 176 pages, you won’t be bogged down in all the particulars and will finish quickly. Well worth reading if that sort of biography suits you.