Branch on the search for Eden

"Where on earth was the Garden of Eden?" NCSE's deputy director Glenn Branch reviewed Brook Wilensky-Lanford's Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden (Grove Press, 2011) for eSkeptic (August 8, 2012). While complaining that Wilensky-Lanford's connection of the search for the historical Eden with the reception of evolution is strained, he concluded, "No matter: the book is fascinating as it stands. ... While the research is generally solid, the presentation is anything but dry; while the topic is often amusing, the presentation is only occasionally droll. Thus commendably navigating between the temptations of pedantry and frivolity, Wilensky-Lanford also imbues her accounts of the seekers after Eden with a novelist's flair." Branch's review will also be published in a future issue of Skeptic.