Going Ape got a nice mention in a Daytona Beach News-Journal column yesterday: Scanning the Florida shelf for the holidays.

“Going Ape: Florida’s Battles Over Evolution in the Classroom” by Brandon Haught. Haught, a high school teacher in Orange City who used to be a spokesman for the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office, has written an exhaustive history of the efforts in the Legislature and local school boards to stop or counter the teaching of evolution over the past 90 years.

It’s all here from the efforts of William Jennings Bryan of Monkey Trial fame (who moved to Florida in the 1920s to hawk real estate) to former Sen. Stephen Wise’s attempts in 2009 and 2011 to legislate intelligent design into the classroom.

In a state where this year even the new president of Florida State University obliquely suggests he is a creationist, this is relevant history and Haught works hard to be fair and factual even when writing about the odder, more anti-modernist anti-evolution activists.