By Theda Skocpol. Harvard. 714 pp. $34.95
By Robert
S. Wistrich. Pantheon. 341 pp. $25
Ed. by Hershel Shanks. Random House. 336
pp. $23
immersion. Moreover, both the early Christians and the Es- senes expected the Messiah to appear imminently. One scroll, "The Messiah of Heaven and Earth," clearly alludes to the idea of bodily resurrection.
So much from the scrolls seems dear, but a number of questions they raise have no ready an- swers: Was John the Baptist a member of the com- munity that wrote the scrolls? Was Jesus, in fact, an Essene? Is the "Temple Scroll" the lost sixth book of the Torah? Taken together,...
By Joseph
Schwartz. HarperCollins. 252 pp. $25
. Helena Cronin. Cambridge. 490 pp. $39.95
Despite its imposing simplicity and awesome explanatory power, the theory of natural selection has never achieved the status of a universally ac- cepted scientific law. As recent surveys reveal, an astonishingly large proportion of people in the oth- erwise rational West do not believe in evolution. Belief, however, is not the only issue: The idea of design-without-a-designer has had to struggle for survival against not only those who dislike its im-plications...
ARTIFICIAL LIFE: The Quest for a New Creation.
By Steven Levy. Pantheon. 390 pp. $25
COMPLEXITY: The Emerging Science at the
Edge of 'Order and Chaos. By M. Mitchell Waldrop.
Simon &Â Schuster. 380 pp. $23
COMPLEXITY: life at the Edge of Chaos. By
Roger Lewin. Macmillan. 208 pp. $22