Customer Reviews

The Great Monkey Trial

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Aside from telling the facts of the famous trial, the author gives the reader a wonderful account of the reason the trial happened, its effects, the birth and decline of the Adamist movement, sketches of all major (and minor) players in the trial and plenty of humorous anecdotes! This is a book you can spend hours soaking up and dip into at almost any time. L. Sprague deCamp writes in an amused and witty style which is a joy to read. All the same, he never forgets that he is telling the story of the attempts of ignorance and fear to blot out knowledge and truth in this country. He treats all the players as human beings but never wavers in his stern condemnation of the prosecution. I urge all intelligent people who care about freedom to read this book!

"The Great Monkey Trial" was begun in 1957, abandoned when the author learned of the imminent publication of Ray Ginger's "Six Days or Forever?" only to be eventually revived and published in 1968. Consequently, de Camp has the advantage of access to not only John T. Scopes' published memoirs, but the archives of the ACLU, newspaper files and published accounts, as well as correspondence and interviews with participants. The volume contains a handful of the colorful editorial cartoons published on the trial as well. "The Great Monkey Trial" remains the most detailed account of the Scopes Trial available (I say this as someone who did their dissertation on this particular event).

Not surprising, given his reputation as a writer of sword and sorcery novels, de Camp's writing style is the most distinctive aspect of his book. Guided by the recollections of those who had actually been in the Dayton courtroom in 1925, de Camp includes vocal inflections, facial expresions, gestures and movements, as well as various crowd comments and reactions. Consequently, de Camp breaths life into the trial transcript, a well as being able to add to the historical record such things as the comments lost in the commotion following the request by the defense to have William Jennings Bryan take the stand.

The chapter titles provide a decidedly military flavor to the story ("The Challenge," "The Crusade," "The Champion Falls," etc.). Although some of the chapter titles touch upon the religious nature of the conflict, overall they are fairly netural. However, de Camp's position is clearly revelaed in the choice of literary quotations at the start of each chapter. For "Single Combat," the chapter detailing the cross-examination of Bryan by Clarence Darrow, de Camp's quotation is from "Alice Through the Looking Glass," where the White Queen tells Alice, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." This certainly has significant rhetorical implications, coloring our reading of Bryan's answers to Darrow's questions.

Ultimately de Camp succeeds in both replicating the ridicule associated with the trial by detailing the circus atmosphere and to legitimate the legacy of ridicule. Although he does avoid taking "an extreme position," de Camp's subtle approach proved just as effective in its time and place as the barbs offered by Darrow and H.L. Mencken during the trial. Perhaps equally important, de Camp's literate retelling of the trial made another detailed examination, or critical assessment, superfluous.

As far as I can tell, this is the best work on Scopes Trial of 1925, even including Edward J. Larson's Pulitzer Prize winning book on the subject: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. Larson attempts to put the trial into a more complete historical setting, while de Camp focusses on the trial, while sketching the tenor of the times and a bit of the immediate aftermath. In terms of pages, de Camp devotes 493 pages to the trial, and Larson 107. Although Larson reviews a number of books that dealt with the trial, he missed this one.

De Camp is quite up front about his point of view: he believes in evolution and he is no Fundamentalist. Nevertheless, he tries very hard to be fair to the principals in the trial. Darrow and Bryan come across as two sides to the same self-aggrandizing coin. While reading this, I found myself humming "Mommas Don't Let You Babies Grow Up to be Lawyers", from Bob Noone's Wingtips Optional. The account includes long quotations from original source material, allowing the reader opportunities to reach their own conclusions. In addition, the book is illustrated with contemporary editorial cartoons.

All together an excellent book.

This is a readable, witty, informative look at the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Author L. Sprague de Camp describes the trial, the prosecution led by ex-Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), and the defense headed by famed agnostic and Chicago attorney Clarence Darrow (1856-1938). Readers get a look at the competing legal strategies, and much actual testimony including when Bryan took the stand as an biblical authority. We also get a look at the carnival like atmosphere in which the town of Dayton, Tennessee attracted international journalists, fast-buck hawkers, preachers and fundamentalists - one of whom actually denounced Bryan for saying that the earth was round. The book reads quickly and does a nice job of outlining this battle of giants over ideas, faith, reason, science, and intellectual freedom. As expected, Bryan and the prosecution come off rather poorly, while the event's significance is well illustrated.

This book mentions some of the trial's many ironies. Defendant John Scopes (1900-1970) was a football coach and substitute teacher who was talked into challenging the law by local businessmen - and he'd once attended school in Bryan's birthplace of Salem, Illinios. Bryan died of a stroke days after the stressful trial ended, but Dayton rewarded him with a Christian school (Bryan College) that opened in 1930 on the site of the high school where Scopes apparently taught evolution. Overall, this is a very interesting and amusing read of a serious subject.