Summer For The Gods: The Scopes Trial And America's Continuing Debate Over Science And Religion [Hardcover]

Edward J. Larson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465075096 | ISBN-13: 978-0465075096 | Publication Date: June 26, 1997

In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the unlikely setting of one of our century’s most contentious dramas: the Scopes trial and the debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. This ”trial of the century” not only cast Dayton into the national spotlight, it epitomized America’s ongoing struggle between individual liberty and majoritarian democracy.Now, with this authoritative and engaging book, Edward J. Larson examines the many facets of the Scopes trial and shows how its enduring legacy has crossed religious, cultural, educational, and political lines.The ”Monkey Trial,” as it was playfully nicknamed, was instigated by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a controversial Tennessee law banning the teaching of human evolution in public schools. The Tennessee statute represented the first major victory for an intense national campaign against Darwinism, launched in the 1920s by Protestant fundamentalists and led by the famed politician and orator William Jennings Bryan. At the behest of the ACLU, a teacher named John Scopes agreed to challenge the statute, and what resulted was a trial of mythic proportions. Bryan joined the prosecutors and acclaimed criminal attorney Clarence Darrow led the defense—a dramatic legal matchup that spurred enormous media attention and later inspired the classic play Inherit the Wind.The Scopes trial marked a watershed in our national discussion of science and religion. In addition to symbolizing the clash between evolutionists and creationists, the trial helped shape the development of both popular religion and constitutional law in America, serving as a precedent for more recent legal and political battles. With new archival material from both the prosecution and the defense, paired with Larson’s keen historical and legal analysis, Summer for the Gods is poised to become a new classic on a pivotal milestone in American history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you haven't seen the film version of Inherit the Wind, you might 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," during which Darwin's theory of evolution was 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 something quite 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 such a controversial trial, but it was 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 carted off to jail to await trial.

What happened next was a bizarre 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.

From Booklist

Few courtroom dramas have captured the nation's attention so fully as that played out in 1925 when Tennessee prosecuted John Scopes for teaching evolutionary science in the classroom. Seventy years later, Larson gives us the drama again, tense and gripping: the populist rhetoric of Scopes' chief accuser, William Jennings Bryan; the mordant wit of his defender, Clarence Darrow; the caustic satire of the trial's most prominent chronicler, H. L. Mencken. But as a legal and historical scholar, Larson moves beyond the titanic personalities to limn the national and cultural forces that collided in that Dayton courtroom: agnosticism versus faith; North versus South; liberalism versus conservatism; cosmopolitanism versus localism. Careful and evenhanded analysis dispels the mythologies and caricatures in film and stage versions of the trial, leaving us with a far clearer picture of the cultural warfare that still periodically erupts in our classes and courts. Bryce Christensen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (June 26, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465075096
• ISBN-13: 978-0465075096
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #239,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward J. Larson is the author of seven books and the recipient of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History for his book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. His other books include Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory; Evolution's Workshop; God and Science on the Galapagos Islands; and Trial and Error: The American Controversy Over Creation and Evolution. Larson has also written over one hundred articles, most of which address topics of law, science, or politics from an historical perspective, which have appeared in such varied journals as The Atlantic, Nature, Scientific American, The Nation, The Wilson Quarterly, and Virginia Law Review. He is a professor of history and law at Pepperdine University and lives in Georgia and California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most publicized misdemeanor case in American history, June 14, 2003

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Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Paperback)

Edward Larson has accomplished something wonderful with this book. In only 266 pages (318 including footnotes and index), he has captured the flow of cultural issues surrounding science, education, and religion in the early twentieth century, the political goals and maneuvering of the parties involved, the actual Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee with the dénouement of the appeal, the falsifying of the events involved in the popular culture, and the ongoing cultural impact of the issues involved in this trial.

As I read I found myself marveling at how Larson so richly captures the cultural forces coming together like tectonic plates and crashing into the Scopes trial. I haven't seen as fair a treatment of the issues involved for all the varying parties (there were many more self-interested folks than Darrow and Bryan) on any other subject. To have that time before the trial captured in such a beautiful way is very valuable.

As others have noted, the notion of the trial started as a publicity stunt to promote the hard luck town of Dayton, TN. The ACLU wanted a narrowly defined test case to overturn the laws forbidding the teaching of evolution. Darrow and his crowd wanted to attack religion more than work out the civil liberties issues involved, Bryan cared more about the rights of the parents as taxpayers to control what their children were taught. Remember, universal public education was still a rather new thing in 1925 and parents then, as now, want to have the education support them in raising their children. The education establishment then, as now, feels a responsibility to teach what they think best.

Bryan and many others were also concerned about the political uses to which evolution had recently been put in the name of survival of the fittest. It isn't a simple issue and shouldn't be turned into a cartoon. Especially since we are in some ways still grappling with these issues.

Yes, Bryan was also a Fundamentalist (although some were more Fundamental than him because he didn't insist on the strict 6 days of 24 hours for the Creation), but imposing that belief wasn't his goal.

Clarifying the truth of the trial versus the popular perceptions in our culture provided by "Only Yesterday" and "Inherit the Wind" is a very valuable service provided by this book. However, the culture seems to want the oversimplification and distortions of "Inherit the Wind" more than the truth of Scopes being a willing participant in a test case more or less on a lark. Or that Scopes never really "taught" evolution. He had used the textbook provided to him by the school and it discussed evolution, but he may never have gotten to that section since he wasn't the regular biology teacher. He taught physics, math, and football and was substituting in the biology class.

The book has a number of very nice pictures that also help capture the period of the trial and the characters involved.

One especially small quibble is that the book does not address the difference between the anti-clerical activities in Great Britain and their political nature because of the state power of the Church and the anti-clerical activities in the United States that were really anti-religion. In fact, a great deal of the fundamentalist backlash against evolution came out of this anti-religion sentiment.

I think it a reasonable view to say that most of the reaction against evolution wasn't from a considered rejection of the theory, but a reaction against being attacked by those who wanted to free America of religion. We didn't have a state church, although most in power were also believers (or publicly posed as believers). The anti-clerical movement was transplanted but to somewhat different effect here than in Europe where evolution was not seen as necessarily inconsistent with Faith (as it has become to be viewed here). But this is a trivial point compared to many wonderful insights this book provides.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "...A trivial thing full of humbuggery and hyprocrisy", September 9, 2006

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Publius (Utopia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Paperback)

The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 combined two great American virtues: 1.) Individual Rights and 2.) The need to make a quick buck. One of the aspects of Larson's book that really comes through is how staged the whole trial was. From the initial meeting of the town fathers with Scopes to convince him to be a Defendant, to the State's decision to nolle prosse the conviction after it was overturned on a technicality, most everything was merely thespian. One of the most insightful stories that Larson relates is when the team of ACLU defense lawyers arrived in Dayton for trial preparation, a young man started to help them with their luggage out of the trunk. One of the lawyers shouted: "Hey boy, what are you doing with those suitcases!" Little did the lawyer know that that boy was John Scopes, the teacher that was charged with teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school. As Larson writes: "The defenders, along with everyone else, had forgotten the defendant." The author writes in this great concise book that the Scopes Monkey trial was less about Scopes, Darrow or Bryan and more about emerging fundamentalism versus a growing American concern of individual rights and liberties. As such, Dayton and John Scopes were essentially bit players in a staged battle between forces that still determine how Americans feel and think to this day. Not only does Larson concern himself with the broader sociological effects of the trial, he also talks about the ACLU's and the prosecutions trial strategy, which, as a lawyer, I found fascinating. Contemporary history has interpreted the Scopes Trial as the high water mark of Fundamentalism, being that the Butler Act and other similar legislation has been struck down as unconstitutional. "Summer" makes this very plain that this in fact was the opening salvo in the Fundamentalist battle and not the death throes. It is not a stretch to argue that the beginnings of the Mega-Church and the Fundamentalist college movement began in Dayton in 1925. Thus, as H.L. Mencken wrote that year: the fundamentalists and "Bryan started something that it will not be easy to stop."

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pulitzer Prize-winner, and deservedly so, March 6, 2001

By 

Karl (England, Great Britain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Summer For The Gods: The Scopes Trial And America's Continuing Debate Over Science And Religion (Hardcover)

The Scopes Monkey Trial of July, 1925 must surely be one of the most misunderstood events in American history.
Numerous school district reading lists (on the Internet) describe the play/film "Inherit the Wind" as though it were an historically accurate account of the trial.
Worse yet, an American professor of law, interviewed by Australian radio station ABC Radio National, in March 1999 (transcript is on the Internet) managed to get wrong:
The way in which Scopes became involved
The length of the trial
How Bryan and Darrow got involved
And even the decade ion which the US Supreme Court handed down the Arkansas decision on the constitutionality of teaching creationism!

So thank the Lord and pass Edward Larson's "Summer for the Gods", a supreme work of scholarship, yet written in the kind of high-readability style of a John Grisham thriller.

The only other attempt to make a thorough, FACTUAL study of the Scopes Trial was Ray Ginger's 1958 book "Six Days or Forever?". Unfortunately the validity of that earlier work was seriously undermined by Ginger's very obvious bias, especially against William Jennings Bryan.

Larson's book suffers from no such flaws, as far as I can tell, treating both defense and prosecution in a thoroughly even-handed fashion. Having said that, Larson does uncover the truth about several myths surrounding the trial - such as the "real" reason why the defense experts only gave their evidence in the form of affadavits.
(It wasn't as simple as the Judge refusing to allow expert testimony.)

There's much, much more I could say in praise of this book, but it all boils down to this:
If you have any interest whatever in the Scopes Monkey Trial, you won't find a better book on the subject than this.