Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. It is the major book of the nineteenth century and one of the most readable and accessible of the great revolutionary works of the scientific imagination. Though, in fact, little read, most people know what it says—at least they think they do. The Origin of Species was the first mature and persuasive work to explain how species change through the process of natural selection....

Intended as a systematic and coherent defense of the Christian faith, Pascal's Thoughts ("Penseés") were assembled after his death from the scattered and unfinished writings he had been working on. Among other things, the author advances a proposition now known as Pascal's Wager: the idea that a rational person should behave as though God exists.