This racy biography of Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) is a portrait of the modern age being born. Huxley, a superb scientist, was also the great apostle of Darwinism, & Adrian Desmond vividly sketches his ferocious assaults on the structures of Victorian society -- religion, class, education -- as he molded Darwin's scientific revolution into a social engine to overthrow the old order. Desmond is of a new breed of historians of ideas probing behind the stereotypes to find the complex political, philosophical, & emotional motivations for scientific discovery. This splendidly readable, often witty, & unobtrusively scholarly biography will fascinate non-scientists. Selected as one of the Best Books of 1997 by the N.Y. Times Book Review. Illustrated.