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The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design . By Ronald L. Numbers. 2d ed. Harvard University Press2005. Pp. 624. Paper. $21.95. ISBN: 0-674-02339-0.

This book is a revised edition of what has become a contemporary classic. The first edition was published in 1992 and became a wellregarded piece of scholarship on the history of the Creationist movement in the United States. It was praised by both critics and supporters of Creationism as well as a number of serious Christians and nonChristians who hold views somewhere in between atheistic evolution and Creation-Science. Not only was the first edition highly successful as a meticulous piece of scholarship, its readability was second to none. It is often rightfully held up as an example of what a historian dealing with a controversial topic can accomplish if he offers a fair-minded portrayal of the cast of characters and the issues that animated them. In this revised edition, Numbers adds two chapters. With the exception of some minor changes, the rest of the book remains identical to the first edition. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, a book that offered an account of the complexity and apparent design of the world's diverse life forms that relied on a purely natural mechanism that did not require an appeal to a divine agent. Darwin argued for two points that are central to his case. First, all life forms—whether human beings, butterflies, or amoebas—share a common ancestor; that is, they are the result of a single-cell organism that came to be at some point in the distant past. This is called common descent. Second, because there is a wide range of life forms that arose from this one cell, Darwin offered the theory of natural selection to account for this. According to this theory, all life forms, in their struggle for survival, gradually through small incremental changes develop new characteristics that are in turn passed on to their progeny. Consequently, over eons of time, different species—with different body plans, characteristics, and a wide range of complexities—develop as a result of the sorts of attributes that are needed for their survival in their particular regions of the globe and for the sorts of challenges they face in striving for survival. In the early to mid-twentieth century, Darwin's views were merged with the growing knowledge of genetics. This is called the "neo-Darwinian synthesis."