It first describes early opposition during Darwin's lifetime, then George Frederick Wright's conversion from Christian Darwinist to Fundamentalist opponent and how creationism influenced the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy and the rise of prominent populist creationists such as William Jennings Bryan.

It then chronicles the growth of creationist organisations in the mid 20th century, such as the Religion and Science Association, the Deluge Geology Society, the Evolution Protest Movement (in the United Kingdom), and the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), the latter moving almost immediately in the direction of theistic evolution.

Creationists mentioned in the book include George Frederick Wright, Louis Agassiz, John William Dawson, George D. Armstrong, Reverend Herbert W. Morris, Charles Hodge, Robert Lewis Dabney, Dwight L. Moody, H. L. Hastings, Luther T. Townsend, Alexander Patterson, Robert Patterson, Eleazar Lord, David Lord, James Dwight Dana.

In the ecumenical journal First Things, historian of Christianity Mark A. Noll describes its 1992 edition as a "thorough, patient, even-handed, and exhaustively researched" chronicle of twentieth century creationism.

[3] Former archbishop of York John Habgood described the expanded edition, in an article in The Times, as a "massively well-documented history" that "must surely be the definitive study of the rise and growth of a cluster of well-meaning, but irrational, theories over a period of some 160 years.