Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Iain McCalman Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Iain McCalman
Photo: Iain McCalman

Iain McCalman

Iain McCalman Biography

Professor Iain Duncan McCalman was born in Nyasaland, Africa, was schooled in Zimbabwe, and earned his BA, MA and PhD in Canberra and Melbourne, Australia. He is Research Professor at the University of Sydney, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

McCalman has held many Visiting Research Fellowships in Britain and the US, including at All Souls, Oxford and as a Mellon Visiting Professor at Californian University of Technology, Pasadena.

He was awarded the Inaugural Vice Chancellor's Prize for Teaching Excellence at the Australian National University in 1994, and was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2007 for services to history and the humanities.

McCalman has written numerous articles in British, American and European History and Literature journals on Modern British, European and Imperial cultural history. He has also written and edited a number of books, including Radical Underworld (2001); Gold: Lost Histories and Forgotten Objects of Australia (2001); his acclaimed The Romantic Age: An Oxford Companion to British Culture, 1776-1832; and The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason (Harper Collins, New York, 2003), which has been translated into twelve languages. He has been a historical consultant and narrator for a number of BBC, ABC and other TV and Film documentaries.
Darwin's Armada: how four voyagers to Australasia won the battle for evolution and changed the world was published in February 2009 by Penguin in Australia and New Zealand and was released later that year by W.W. Norton & Company in the US and by Simon and Schuster in the UK.

Iain McCalman's website

This bio was last updated on 01/07/2014. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Iain McCalman at BookBrowse
Darwin's Armada jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Iain McCalman but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Ken Alder

    Ken Alder

    Ken Alder is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard. His first book, Engineering the Revolution, won the 1998 Dexter Prize for the best book on the history of technology. ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Darwin's Armada

    Try:
    The Measure of All Things
    by Ken Alder

  • Jared Diamond

    Jared Diamond

    Jared Diamond, a noted polymath, is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan's Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Darwin's Armada

    Try:
    Guns, Germs & Steel
    by Jared Diamond

We recommend 11 similar authors


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.