"This impressive book is a critical examination of those religious and scientific issues that still surround the creationism versus evolutionism debates. It is highly recommended for all students, educators, and scholars who are concerned about these ongoing challenges to teaching the factual theory of organic evolution."
H. James Birx
Professor of Anthropology, Canisius College
Visiting Scholar, Harvard University (The Divinity School)
"This book is remarkable and indispensible for its irenic spirit. While the authors document quite accurately the warfare mindset characteristic of many on both sides of the creation-evolution controversy, they do not approach their own task as if they were wading into a battlefield. Instead, they seek to give biology teachers a better understanding of the fears and precommitments that keep many of their students from learning evolutionary explanations for the diversity of life. They offer practical ideas for how these ideas can be overcome cooperatively and constructively in the classroom, and encouraging examples of how this is already being done effectively. The last chapter is particularly outstanding for the invaluable practical ideas it offers."
Rev. Dr. Christopher R. Smith
"This book becomes a vital document in one of the most important issues of our age."
Stephen Jay Gould
Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard
"A well-researched, clearly presented, and judiciously argued account of the controversies surrounding the teaching of evolution and a valuable guide to how educators should handle them."
Howard Gardner
Professor of Education, Harvard
"This book should be in the hands of every educator dealing with the subject of evolution."
Ernst Mayr
Emeritus Professor of Zoology, Harvard
"At last a book for teachers to help them cope with antievolutionism. Clearly written and filled with practical advice about the underlying religious and scientific issues prompting student questions. Defending Evolution should be on every teacher's bookshelf."
Eugenie C. Scott
Director, National Center for Science Education
"Through a rigorous examination of both the beliefs of students who doubt evolution and the most effective methods for teaching science, the authors steer a respectful course in answering the difficult questions asked of teachers. This book will do much to free American science classrooms of creation science and return the teaching of religious beliefs more properly to our nation's Sunday schools and houses of worship."
Philip Sadler
Director, Science Education Department
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
"It is a thorough, systematic compilation of the problem of teaching evolution and is way past due as a resource for the professional science educator."
Charles Granger
Professor of Biology & Education
University of Missouri-St. Louis
"The Alters prose is clear, their research convincing, and their attention to both facts and emotional intent makes the book more useful than a more traditional refutation of creationism can ever be."
Nadine Butcher Ball
Maryville University School of Education
"It is pro-active and I would strongly recommend it to any science educator who cares about science, teaching and scientific literacy."
Anne Ross
Professor, Champlain College
"The wake-up call has been sounded many times, and yet scientists and science educators keep trying to ignore it, turning the other cheek, asleep in their ivory towers. Creationists have made steady advances since the 1960s, despite having been repeatedly and soundly defeated in the courtrooms (the last time they won a legal battle was at the Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925). The advances are being made at the level that is farthest from the everyday concern of most evolutionary biologists: the grassroots level of junior and high school students, their parents and—astoundingly—their teachers."
View the entire review from Massimo's Skeptic and Humanist Web.