His fame was a product of his adaptation of evolutionary theory into social Darwinism, his embrace of the purest individualism, and his enthusiasm for a brand of capitalism without any form of restraint. However, his enthusiasm for the extreme did little to make his personal life less miserable, and his alliance with the novelist George Eliot was probably one of the least romantic relationships of the Victorian age. Francis (political science, U. of Canterbury, New Zealand) wisely focuses on the ways Spencer sought to explain all of modern life in within orderly biological, psychological and social structures, and how his thinking influenced the developers of other movements and schools of thought. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)