These selected letters document that time after the publication of Origin of Species and reveal much about Darwin that few people know and understand.There are several letters to Asa Gray in America while the Civil War was raging-"I have begun to think whether it would not be well for the peace of the world, if you were to split up into two or three nations. " He was strongly opposed to slavery. He considered whether it would be better for a man of science to not have a wife and children for he then,"might work away like a Trojan." Here is an indication of the vast correspondence he carried on with sources of information from all over the world and also how much of that time he was ill, so much so that he spent whole days in bed and could get no work done. These letters are essential to knowing the man who changed our lives forever.