Desmond Ford was one of the most prominent preachers of Righteousness by Faith in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. In 1970, he completed a second doctorate in New Testament (eschatology) at Manchester University, UK, under the supervision of the eminent Professor F. F. Bruce. From 1960 till 1977, Ford taught at Avondale College, in NSW Australia and helped train a whole generation of ministers and teachers. In 1977, he and his second wife Gillian and family went to teach at Pacific Union College, in Angwin, California. Ford had many enemies who were bitterly opposed to his emphasis on a sinless Christ, justification by faith alone, a different interpretation of prophecy, and a kinder approach to Roman Catholic Christians. Robert D. Brinsmead, called "a gadfly on the flank of Adventism," switched from his Adventist perfectionism to teaching the Reformer's gospel of righteousness by faith in the early 1970s. This heightened the agitation against Ford, especially when Brinsmead renounced Adventism's unique doctrine of 1844 and the investigative judgment. Through historicist principles and with the aid of the nonbiblical Year-Day Principle, Adventists had taught from 1853 that in 1844, Christ entered the Most Holy Place in heaven and began the judgment of the living. The heads of the Adventist Forum chapter asked Ford to take a meeting on the subject of 1844 at Pacific Union College. After the talk, Ford was pulled out his classes and sent to General Conference headquarters to write up his views. This manuscript was the result. In August 1980 at convocation at Glacier View, Ford's views were rejected and plans for his dismissal were put in place. In this volume two, chapters 3 and 4 deal with the biblical issue of the Day Atonement in the New Testament books of Hebrews and Revelation in order to show there is no biblical evidence for 1844 and the Investigative Judgment.

Nevada's highly individualistic political culture has produced a conservative political philosophy in an open society. Economic developments resulting from mining and gambling reinforced and heightened the individualistic ethic that many early settlers brought to the frontier state. This ethic is also evident in the opposition of most Nevadans to big government, big labor, and big business. Belief in limited government partially explains the apparent anomaly of the electorate's backing a pro-choice position on abortion while opposing the Equal Rights Amendment. The book discusses the important roles played by Nevada's present U.S. senators in two of the state's ongoing controversies with the federal government: the longstanding water rights dispute between Native Americans, backed by the federal government, and Nevada's ranchers; and the decade-long fight against the establishment of the nation's first permanent nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain. Don W. Driggs is Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the author of The Constitution of the State of Nevada: A Commentary. Leonard E. Goodall is a professor of management and public administration at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of numerous works, including State Politics and Higher Education.

Widely noted for his role in the passage of the National Reclamation Act of 1902, Francis G. Newlands of Nevada was a champion of the growth of federal power in the modernization of America. One of the few liberal national Democrats at the beginning of the twentieth century, he is known as a key architect of the modern regulatory state. Newlands worked to irrigate the Nevada desert and other arid western states with nationally funded reclamation and dam-building projects. As a leading western Progressive, he supported national planning for the utilization of all the nation's water resources, the Progressive conservation cause espoused by Republican Theodore Roosevelt, and the supervision of private corporations by an enlarged and more powerful federal government. Yet he opposed Progressives on many issues, voicing suspicions about centralized banking, defending the right of private corporations to fair treatment by public regulatory agencies, even advocating the denial of suffrage to African Americans through the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment. William Rowley's biography reveals a complicated and sophisticated man who successfully lived a dual political life under a cloud of personal and public scandal. It is a fascinating story of American politics in a time of immense national change.