This is an extraordinary book. The author, with meticulous attention to detail, traces the historical and spiritual journey of one of Charles Darwin's most fervent admirers, George Romanes. But it is Romanes's movement from unbelief to faith in the context of Darwin's death that is, perhaps, of most significance in a post-Darwinian world plagued by skepticism about whether belief in God is ever possible. … Woven into this account Pleins puts in a number of interesting details, including a reconstruction of Darwin's house, the reading material that likely influenced Romanes, as well as specific struggles of more general importance. … Overall, the impression one has from reading this book is that Romanes was a conflicted and complicated man, racked by an obsessive attachment to Darwin, whose death left a void that he sought to fill through many and various religious alternatives.

Celia Deanne-Drummond, University of Notre Dame, USA, Journal of Religion volume 96/1, January 2016

Pleins's book doesn't focus on Romanes as an individual site of the conflict between faith and science. Instead, his book focuses on Romanes's “Memorial Poem,” written in praise of Darwin at the time of Darwin's death. The lengthy poem was lost to the public for over a century, only an abridged version published. It is reprinted here in an appendix, and Pleins spends most of the book analyzing it.

Peter Leithart, First Things

Pleins's lovingly attentive account of the poem is very helpful in teasing out its engagement with theological questions, Biblical sources, biographical events and Darwinian evolution.

John Holmes, Reports of the National Center for Science Education

Some books do not fit neatly into genre categories. J. David Pleins offers us an excellent example of a multidisciplinary work with In Praise of Darwin. It is part history, part literary critique, part philosophy, and part theology.

Bethany Sollereder, University of Exeter, UK, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith

[In Praise of Darwin] will interest all Darwin scholars and anyone thinking through the wider significance of evolution for Christian belief ... David Pleins must take his share of the credit for putting this Memorial Poem into print together with his own excellent, extensive and illuminating analysis.

E Gwyn Jordan, Faith and Thought

[A] meticulous examination, quatrain by quatrain, of Romanes's poems ... [Pleins] presents a thoughtful and instructive reading of Victorian poetry, writing clearly and following the poem and his subject conscientiously.

Isis Journal