This book is about Alfred Russel Wallace in Southeast Asia and also Charles Darwin and one of the most famous episodes in the history of science. Here a shocking truth is revealed – Wallace’s story was transformed in the mid-20th century by amateurs, cranks and conspiracy theorists into the version that everyone today knows - a purportedly forgotten genius who faced overwhelming disadvantages and discrimination and who has unjustly not received the credit, priority or fame he deserves. For a generation, this 20th-century myth has become common knowledge. This is the only book on Wallace in Southeast Asia by a qualified historian of science. John van Wyhe specialises on Darwin and Wallace and has written more on them than any other historian. This meticulously researched book dispels very many myths that are repeated as ‘facts’ in the popular science victim-hero accounts of Wallace. This book represents a quantum leap in our knowledge of the events that would change our understanding of life on Earth forever. "The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness." T H Huxley (1887) Charles Darwin remains one of the most famous scientists in history. His life and work have been intensively investigated by historians for decades. In comparison, the other man to conceive of evolution by natural selection is comparatively forgotten Alfred Russel Wallace. This book is based on the most thorough research programme ever conducted on Wallace. There are many surprises. As he travelled from island to island collecting vast numbers of exotic birds and insects, his ideas about species gradually evolved. This book reveals for the first time how Wallace solved one of the greatest mysteries of life on Earth. John van Wyhe is one of the world's leading experts on Darwin, Wallace and the history of evolution. Currently a Senior Lecturer at the National University of Singapore, he is the author or editor of Darwin Online, Wallace Online, Darwin's Notebooks from the Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin's Shorter Publications, Darwin in Cambridge, Wallace's Letters from the Malay Archipelago and the illustrated biography: Darwin.