Slack, the former editor of natural history magazine Pacific Discovery
, has long covered clashes between scientists and creationists, and he knows both sides thoroughly—his own father, an experimental psychologist, took up creationism in the late 1990s, following a conversion to fundamentalist Christianity. In 2005, online magazine Salon
assigned Slack to cover a federal court case in which a group of parents sued a Pennsylvania school board after it voted to include creationist material in high school science curricula. While Slack never hides his own convictions—firmly in support of evolution—he is staunchly evenhanded throughout, giving all players the opportunity to represent themselves and their ideas. Everyone involved in the case—the presiding judge, the opposing teams of attorneys, the students and townspeople of Dover—come alive in Slack's economical yet revealing prose, and his history of both the contemporary creationist resurgence and the long-running philosophical debates behind it provide some much needed perspective on modern American culture wars. In this must-read for anyone involved in education—from federal officials to local school board voters—Slack demonstrates in crisp, clear language how science and religion are not opposites but different ways of thinking, each valuable for different purposes. (June)
