DARWIN SLEPT HERE Reviewed in Outside Magazine

Darwin Slept Here: Discovery, Adventure, and Swimming Iguanas in Charles Darwin's South America, by Eric Simons, is reviewed in the new issue of Outside: "February marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and, naturally, he publication of a slew of new books about him. But while most--like the fine, brainy Banquet at Delmonico’s, by Barry Werth—portray the naturalist as an earnest, white-bearded thinker, journalist Eric Simons celebrates a refreshingly different Darwin: a twenty-something traveler fond of hurling iguanas into the sea and charging up any tall peak he could find. With copies of The Voyage of the Beagle in hand, Simons headed for South America, retracing parts of his famous 1831 trip and doing what Darwin did when he wasn’t studying finches: riding with Argentinean gauchos, hunting rheas and ogling senoritas. “There’s a danger in labeling someone as a genius; it makes them inaccessible,” Simons writes. “But Darwin the person—well, he was a lot like us.”