Dobbs weaves together family drama, Victorian science and oceanography in this spirited history of a great 19th-centrury debate -- and rivalry. Agassiz, whose father lead the fight against the theory of evolution by natural selection, spent decades collecting evidence, never published against Darwin's ideas over the formation of coral reefs. David Dobbs writes for Popular Science and is also the author of The Northern Forest and the Great Gulf.  (NAT80, $25.00)