I was a junior in high school when I first read that Answers in Genesis was planning to build a $27-million–dollar creationist museum just minutes from my home. The creationism/evolution "debate" had long been an interest of mine, and when my like-minded father left a clipped newspaper article about the museum on my desk with the words "uh oh!" scrawled across the top, I was dismayed to read that my town would soon be embroiled in evangelical fervor.

The idea of a graphic version of the Origin of Species is a good one, since many casual readers will never get through the original. This is perhaps unfortunate, but so much misinformation is available on evolution in the popular literature that any attempt to clarify Darwin's views on evolution by natural selection has to be welcomed. A graphic format might be more easily read and understood by those who have no time to read more deeply or are casually interested, but do not want to commit more time on it than a graphic format would require.

After reading Fazale Rana's The Cell's Design, the sequel to Origins of Life (Rana and Ross 2004; reviewed in RNCSE 2007 May–Aug; 27 [3–4]: 45–8), I was reminded of John Conlee's 1979 lyrics, "These rose colored glasses, that I'm looking through / Show only the beauty, 'cause they hide all the truth." This country music classic sums up Rana's book, which starts with the foregone conclusion that the cell is designed, by explaining the principles (with reference to Dembski and Behe) of "intelligent design" (in chapter 1).

Mark Perakh was born in 1924 in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1941 he volunteered to fight the German invasion of the USSR. Later he studied at the Odessa Institute of Technology, earning a Diploma in Engineering Physics, and later an equivalent of a PhD degree from the Odessa Polytechnic Institute. In the 1950s he was arrested by the KGB on the charge of engaging in "anti-Soviet propaganda" and spent several years in a Siberian prison camp. Subsequently, he conducted research and taught physics in several universities in the USSR.