| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 270 words from this article are provided below; about 522 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, 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. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• 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 American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
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 American Historical Review, 104.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Ronald L. Numbers. Darwinism Comes to America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1998. Pp. 216. Cloth $39.95, paper $18.95.

For nearly three decades, Ronald L. Numbers has been exploring the convoluted story of the reception of evolutionary concepts in the United States. As author of numerous articles and The Creationists (1992), and as an editor of the multivolume Creationism in Twentieth-Century America (1995), he has added significantly to our understanding of this important topic. His purpose in writing the compact volume under review is to correct various myths, errors, and misinterpretations of the Darwinian legacy in America. Based on a careful analysis of documentary and published sources, this book offers historians a needed corrective to existing perceptions of the evolution controversy. 1

Following a concise introduction that traces the reception of evolution from the late nineteenth century to the present, Numbers begins his analysis with an effort to gauge the initial acceptance of evolutionary concepts by American scientists. He focuses on the eighty naturalists who were members of the National Academy of Sciences before 1900 and finds a very complex situation. Although the concept of special creation does appear to have been rejected by all but a few of these naturalists, they adopted such a wide range of evolutionary concepts and definitions that it is impossible to argue that any sort of consensus had been reached by 1900. Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) thus reinforced naturalists' growing commitment to naturalistic explanations, but the variety of these explanations indicate a much more complicated situation in late nineteenth-century thought than most historians realize. . . .

There are about 522 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.