The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and its Failures

The British naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the nineteenth century. He is best known for working in parallel with Darwin on evolution and natural selection. A social reformer and a prolific writer, he criticised the social and economic system in nineteenth-century Britain, and raised concerns over the environmental impact of human activity. First published in 1898, this book looks back over the history of the nineteenth century, and describes its material and intellectual achievements with the aim 'to show how fundamental is the change they have effected in our life and civilization'. The book surveys technological inventions such as the railway, the telegraph and telephone, as well as photography. But it also analyses the century's 'failures', and discusses the issues of poverty, greed and militarism.