Most of us probably don’t recognize the significance of Feb. 12, 1809, but it was a day when two icons of history were born: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. The father of emancipation and the father of evolution never met, but their work and their writing became a catalyst that ushered in a new way of thinking and seeing the world. And in more ways than historically or scientifically, as we typically credit them.

In his new book Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life, author Adam Gopnik leans on the discrepancy of those passing words at Lincoln’s deathbed: Was it “Now he belongs to the angels” or “Now he belongs to the ages?” He uses this debate as an entrance point into a discussion about time and death and how both Lincoln and Darwin influenced the birth of modernity. In doing so, he draws back the curtain on the public life of these two men and provides a glimpse of their private lives and personal struggles.

Gopnik, who has been a writer for The New Yorker since 1981, is a knowledgeable researcher who, simply put, appears to have read every biography about Lincoln and Darwin as well as every speech, every letter and every book either men may have written.

Although Gopnik’s own book is only a little over 200 pages, it’s a dense and thought-provoking read. He mixes anecdotal information on Lincoln and Darwin with heady philosophical and spiritual discussions of the time, chronicling the evolution of not only these intangibles but of the two men as well.

Gopnik stays on course though most of the book, but the conclusion of Angels and Ages comes across as almost sentimental. There, Gopnik takes the principles and the lessons from these two men and applies it to today’s world. While this certainly is an element of “modern life,” his conclusion is less cohesive than the rest of the book — at one point shaking a finger at those who misunderstand Darwinisn and at another providing his readers with a sort of “live and let live” moral on life. Regardless, Gopnik’s presentation of these two men allows his readers to see and accept their fine points and flaws, and permission to continue believing that Lincoln and Darwin have earned their status as two giants in world history.