| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 192 words from this article are provided below; about 316 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement. By Michael Lienesch. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xii, 338 pp. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-3096-3.)

Michael Lienesch's fine study of American fundamentalism is arranged around theoretical structures supplied by the social scientific study of social movements: identity, mobilization, framing, alignment, opportunities, and staging, among others. Lienesch tries to balance "an attempt to apply some of the best theoretical tools that scholars have devised in order to understand political movements" with "a book about the practice of politics, complete with colorful characters and detailed descriptions of events" (p. 7). Social scientists looking for an extension of their theoretical approach to social movements might be disappointed as Lienesch does not seem interested in challenging or changing the standard structures of social movement theory. By contrast, historians will be pleased that Lienesch uses social movement theory to recast our understanding of the fundamentalist movement in the twentieth-century United States. Indeed, this book could be a case study of how social theory can be fruitfully applied to historical work to uncover what might otherwise be hidden.

. . .

There are about 316 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.