Don't even try to engage publisher Chuck Crumly in a discussion of the merits of intelligent design vs. evolution. "There is no debate about evolution," says Crumly, who heads the science group at the University of California Press. "ID is not an alternative to evolution. It's bogus."

But that doesn't mean he won't publish on the subject. This month UCP is releasing Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction by Eugenie C. Scott. A year from now UCP will publish Mark Isaak's The Counter-Creationism Handbook. Also slated for a future list is Evolution and Faith by Joan Roughgarden, a Stanford biologist seeking to reconcile evolution with religious belief.

UCP isn't alone. As the pro-ID faction gets louder and more pervasive—and evolution supporters raise their voices to counter the movement—publishers are jumping in to capitalize on new interest in the oldest question in the world.

Among the new books that speak against the theory of ID are Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science (Basic, Sept. 12), which attacks the ID advocates at Seattle's Discovery Institute. Mooney's book has gone into a fourth printing, with 30,000 copies in print. In November, Norton will publish Niles Eldredge's Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life, with a final chapter addressing the ID controversy.

Pro-IDers are also having their say, in books like Pamela R. Winnick's A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion (Nelson, Nov.) and Tom Bethell's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (Regnery, Nov.). The Free Press, which publishes Michael Behe, the leading scientist in the ID camp, will reissue Behe's 1996 book, Darwin's Black Box, in March, including a new afterword in which the author replies to his critics. The Free Press also will publish The Language of God by Francis Collins. Head of the Human Genome Project and a devout Christian, Collins will detail his own reconciliation of faith with Darwinism.

This interest in publishing new ID-related books comes as sales are increasing for older titles that deal with the subject.

Sales of InterVarsity Press's four key ID-related titles by Phillip Johnson and William Dembski quadrupled between July and September. Free Press v-p and senior editor Bruce Nichols says Behe's sales have edged up since President Bush commented favorably about ID in August: "I wouldn't call it an explosion, but there certainly was an uptick." Behe continues to sell steadily, about 15,000 copies a year.

Audra Wolfe, a senior editor at Rutgers University Press, says she was surprised by how well her recent ID-related title has done. Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism, a collection edited by Matt Young and Taner Edis (July 2004), sold out in six months and has been reprinted twice, for a total of 3,500 copies in print. "Fairly impressive for a $40 scholarly book," says Wolfe, who noted that news coverage of ID has provided a boost: "Sales the past month have tripled the monthly average to date."

But not all publishers see ID as a sure thing. At Regnery, executive editor Harry Crocker cautions that "issue books" can lack purpose and tend not to sell well. It is another matter, though, "if you're providing the reader with information that he feels has been suppressed." Crocker cites his Politically Incorrect Guide to Science as an example of such a book.

Meanwhile, at Georgetown University Press, director Richard Brown says he wishes he had worked ID into his own list. He has his eyes open for new material on the subject. "It would be dynamite," says Brown. "There's so much going on. You've got legitimate scientists who are pushing pretty hard for intelligent design, so this is not going to go away."

Klinghoffer is the author most recently of Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History (Doubleday).