Using place, politics, and rhetoric as analytical tools, historical geographer David N. Livingstone investigates how religious communities sharing a Scots Presbyterian heritage engaged with Darwin and Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. His findings, presented as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, transform our understandings of the relationship between science and religion.

The particulars of place--whether in Edinburgh, Belfast, Toronto, Princeton, or Columbia, South Carolina--shaped the response to Darwin's theories. Were they tolerated, repudiated, or welcomed?...