Kudos to the Academy

In 1990,1 took a cruise that largely retraced Charles Darwin's journey in South America on the Beagle . On his 55-month voyage in the 1830s, Darwin made the observations that led to his seminal 1859 work, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection." My cruise offered a firsthand look at Darwin's "tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth." This was the flora and fauna that captivated and ultimately transformed his views of nature. Darwin lias always been a personal hero of mine. In his lifetime, he was vilified for his views on how species evolved through tlie process of natural selection. To his credit, he never backed down from his theory. Now to my limited list of heroes I add the National Academy of Sciences for its new guidebook, "Teaching About Evolution ...