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Reaching back to the origins of antievolutionism in the 1920s, and continuing to the promotion of intelligent design today, Michael Lienesch skillfully analyzes one of the most formidable political movements of the twentieth century. Applying extensive original sources and social movement theory, Lienesch begins with fundamentalism, describing how early twentieth-century fundamentalists worked to form a collective identity, to develop their own institutions, and to turn evolution from an idea into an issue. He traces the emerging antievolution movement through the 1920s, examining debates over Darwinism that took place on college campuses and in state legislatures throughout the country. With fresh insights and analysis, Lienesch retells the story of the 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial and reinterprets its meaning. In tracking the movement from that time to today, he explores the rise of creation science in the 1960s, the alliance with the New Christian Right in the 1980s, and the development of the theory of intelligent design in our own time.

Political scientists are predisposed to view the American constitution as the product of pragmatic politics. In part, this interpretation has been inspired by the founders themselves, who frequently spoke of the importance of political experience in framing the constitution. Yet the framers held a different definition of experience from our own. By "experience" they meant not only the practical participation in immediate events, but also the theoretical knowledge gained from the study of history, philosophy, and science. This article examines their changing concept of experience. Relying primarily on the debates in the federal and state ratifying conventions, it reviews the intellectual conflicts that took place between Federalists and Antifederalists concerning the roles of historical, philosophical, and scientific theories in the creation of the constitution. The contradictions that resulted within constitutional theory, and the importance of these contradictions for later politics are discussed.

Among recent American historians, few topics have provoked more controversy than the character of the Confederation period. On one side, scholars like Forrest McDonald have contended that the era from the end of the revolutionary war to the creation of the federal constitution was a time of economic confusion and political chaos, a "critical period" in which popular protest became violent enough to threaten civil war. On the other side, critics of this view led by Merrill Jensen have argued that the period was in fact prosperous and relatively stable, that political protests were few and mostly well behaved, and that, in short, the "critical period" was really not very critical at all. This article does not enter into this debate. Instead, it works from the premise that events are often less important than the perception of events. That is, actual conditions aside, it considers how Americans of the day perceived these conditions. In particular, it describes how they viewed their politics through the filter of their understanding of history.