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Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion

Amazon.com Price:  $4.95 (as of 03/05/2019 00:20 PST- Details)

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The Scopes “Monkey Trial” marked a watershed in our national discussion of science and religion. Along with symbolizing the clash between evolutionist and creationist camps, the trial helped shape the development of both popular religion and constitutional law in america, serving as a precedent for more contemporary legal and political battles. Pairing new archival material from both the Bryan prosecution and the Darrow defense with Larson’s keen historical and legal analysis, Summer for the Gods offers a fresh interpretation of a pivotal event in American history.

If you have not seen the film version of Inherit the Wind, you will have read it in high school. And even people who have never heard of either the movie or the play probably know something about the events that inspired them: The 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” all through which Darwin’s theory of evolution was once essentially put on trial before the nation. Inherit the Wind paints a romantic picture of John Scopes as a principled biology teacher driven to present scientific theory to his students, even in the teeth of a Tennessee state law prohibiting the teaching of anything other than creationism. The truth, it turns out, was once something fairly different. In his fascinating history of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods, Edward J. Larson makes it abundantly clear that Truth and the Purity of Science had very little to do with the Scopes case. Tennessee had passed a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution, and the American Civil Liberties Union responded by advertising statewide for a high-school teacher willing to defy the law. Communities all across Tennessee saw an opportunity to put themselves on the map by hosting this kind of controversial trial, but it was once the town of Dayton that came up with a sacrificial victim: John Scopes, a man who knew little about evolution and wasn’t even the class’s regular teacher. Chosen by the city fathers, Scopes obligingly broke the law and was once carted off to jail to await trial.

What happened next was once a unusual mix of theatrics and law, enacted by William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. Though Darrow lost the trial, he made his point–and his career–by calling Bryan, a noted Bible expert, as a witness for the defense. Summer for the Gods is a remarkable retelling of the trial and the events leading up to it, proof positive that truth is stranger than science.

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