Customer Reviews

Clarence Darrow for the Defense

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This book was my bible in high school. I appreciate that there are more scholarly, objective - and accurate - treatments of Clarence Darrow's life, but this is the one that got me interested and that still holds a special place. Although written in the 1940s, this life of Darrow was well suited to the climate of the 1960s (when I first read it), when conventional thinking was questioned and liberal ideals were gaining traction. Darrow championed not only evolution in the Scopes Trial, but also the death penalty v. mental illness (Leopold & Loeb), racial integration (the Sweet case in Detroit), and other unpopular causes long before they became the legal norm.

Irving Stone's books are great entry texts to the lives of men and women of great ideals and courage - perhaps a little "adolescent," but that's part of their particular value. I have a Michelangelo-obsessed friend for whom Stone's The Agony and the Ecstacy has the same cultish stature. I'm not sure if there's any writer today providing the same important service, but we could use one.

This is a nicely readable, informative look at the life of attorney Clarence Darrow (1856-1938). Darrow left his well-paying job as attorney for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad to defend socialist labor leader Eugene Debs in the aftermath of Chicago's 1894 Pullman strike. As readers see, Darrow would then spend the next four decades defending other outcasts and unpopular causes. Darrow would defend labor activists and strikers, millionaire killers Leopold and Loeb, racial integration in Detroit (the Sweet Case), and the teaching of Evolution in Tennessee (Scopes Monkey trial). His opponents would include not only prosecutors, but law makers, ex-Presidential candidates like William Jennings Bryan, and very often enraged public opinion. Readers see how Darrow combined shrewd legal strategy with superb ability to question and cross-examine witnesses. Of course, he was also recognized as among the greatest courtroom orators ever - Chicagoans fought to get courtroom seats for his summation in the Leopold and Loeb case. Darrow would also twice stand trial in Los Angeles, charged with jury tampering from the McNamara case - he was acquitted but left shaken by the experience. All is here in this interesting if slightly dated book written shortly after his passing.

I thought this author's interesting style was better than the other biographies on Darrow in the library.

When Darrow found that the McNamaras were responsible for destroying bridges: "He felt like a man with a rumbling volcano in his pocket, trying to hold back the eruption with his naked hand." (p. 278)

Does this quote sound odd to anyone else?

A very comprehensive biography that describes all the various aspects of Clarence Darrow's personality, of his work and his times. Stone has great empathy and understanding so that as a reader I can feel I am being taken along to think and feel with Darrow who effectively promulgated and lived his ideals (and philosophy) of justice, equality, freedom, love, human dignity and who deeply understood their interrelations. His charity as one form of his love was so unconditional and absolute that he took so many law cases of poor people without pay. Having read Irving Stone's biographical novels of Eugene Debs (with the misleading title `Adversary in the House') and of Michelangelo, my high expectations were not disappointed by this biography. Irving Stone did a great job because he provides a sharp insight into the socio-economic injustice in the capitalist system, the influence of the big corporations on the government, the development and the problems of the American working class movement, especially its unions. He describes the bigotry, prejudices, hatred and violence among large portions of the American society as partly supported and prompted by the media. And Irving Stone knew how to tell all this in a consistent semi-literary style and composition (the novelist shining through) keeping a delicate balance between reflective distance and narrative closeness to his subject matter. Impressive and inspiring confidence in the truth of his biography is Stone's thorough and extensive research in preparation of the book as can be seen from the references. I would recommend a new fine edition, cloth bound and illustrated - for the biography and its subject are still pertinent in the present times.
Thorsten-Michael Wulff

A quick search shows that "a reader" appears again and again in reviews of books about Darrow, and makes repeated, unsubstantiated and biting attacks on the great trial lawyer. These are obvious vendettas, not reviews worth considering. The reviewer neither identifies himself or herself properly (i.e., doesn't have the courtesy to take ownership of the criticisms); nor is any substantial evidence offered - only thin opinions that appear to be more slander than thoughtful evaluation. Darrow, for all his faults, deserves better treatment!

I picked up a worn copy of this book in my host's home: it looked suitably dull (I like dull books to help put me to sleep.) Boy! Was I wrong this time. Irving Stone writes well: I suspect that despite the romantic sweep of prose, the careful tilting of the light, I believe the portrait that emerges is utterly true: Clarence Darrow is an unacknowledged giant in American intellectual history.
Darrow embodies just about every trait I admire in people. He was an intellectual of enormous magnitude who was ever the common man with a fierce devotion to the poor and underprivileged. He was fearless in the face of insurmountable prejudice, the threats of powerful institutions and just plain hate. The obstacles he faced in the defense of Big Bill Haywood are unbelievable, and his next Union case in California was even more challenging. Both times he plucked a modicum of success out of the jaws of incredible manipulation by the courts. I believe his notoriety and character helped shift America from the depths of ignorance, greed and bigotry that characterized the Gilded Age to the greater enightenment of his time: empowering Unions, the poor and dispossessed and setting the stage for the New Deal. Reading this book convinced me that the law and lawyers can be the most powerful tool for social transformation. The portrait painted by this book is simply awesome: it reveals how one man can move a nation over the fulcrum of his pure heart and piercing mind and steely language. It became instantly one of my favorite books: I went out and scarfed up as many copies of the early hardbound editions as I could find to share with my best friends and family. Read it and weep: there is no one anywhere nearly as effective nowadays to fight the same battles against religious zealotry, bigotry against minorities or the enormous arrogance and power of the super rich. Clarence, where are you now?

This book is a good introduction to the life of Clarence Darrow. It spans all his major cases and leaves the reader with awe for a man whose ability as an attorney in the Dr. Oscar Sweet case in Detroit, Michigan in 1925 was as if God had descended heaven from Heaven to win the freedom of a black professional who was accused of murder in an America that already had witnessed the Tulsa, Oklahoma and St. Louis race riots. His defense of the poor in the anthracite coal case of 1902 and the rioters in the Haymarket case stand as models for Americans of any age. The only weakness in the book is that his addresses to juries are not included. Clarence Darrow is as important to Americans as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were in the eras of the Civil War and the Great Depression. I recommend this book for all Americans of all ages. He was a defender of the poor and a defender of the values and ethics of American society. Elliot Spitzer, the Attorney General of the State of New York, is some ways bears resemblance to Clarence Darrow. I recommend the book highly, the reverence I have for the life of Clarence Darrow is huge only for God do I have more.

This book - a fictional bio of Clarence Darrow - was published in 1941 and, even its used condition, was better-preserved than books a tenth of its age. I appreciate the good price and the quality of product and service.

I thought this author's interesting style was better than the other biographies on Darrow in the library.

When Darrow found that the McNamaras were responsible for destroying bridges: "He felt like a man with a rumbling volcano in his pocket, trying to hold back the eruption with his naked hand." (p. 278)

Does this quote sound odd to anyone else?

I thought this author's interesting style was better than the other biographies on Darrow in the library.

When Darrow found that the McNamaras were responsible for destroying bridges: "He felt like a man with a rumbling volcano in his pocket, trying to hold back the eruption with his naked hand." (p. 278)

Does this quote sound odd to anyone else?