Keeping the Faith
God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation
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4.7 • 21 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“Brenda Wineapple’s wonderful account of the Scopes trial sheds light not only on the battles of the past but on the struggles of the present.”—Jon Meacham
“History at its most delicious.”—The New York Times Book Review (front page review, Editors’ Choice)
The dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy
“Propulsive . . . a terrific story about a pivotal moment in our history.”—Ken Burns
ONE OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school.
Brenda Wineapple, the award-winning author of The Impeachers, explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention. Darrow, a brilliant and controversial lawyer, said in his electrifying defense of Scopes that people should be free to think, worship, and learn. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, argued for the prosecution that evolution undermined the fundamental, literal truth of the Bible and created a society without morals, meaning, and hope.
In Keeping the Faith, Wineapple takes us into the early years of the twentieth century—years of racism, intolerance, and world war—to illuminate, through this pivotal legal showdown, a seismic period in American history. At its heart, the Scopes trial dramatized conflicts over many of the fundamental values that define America, and that continue to divide Americans today.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Dive into this true story of an American man who dared to question Christian orthodoxy—and the infamous court case that followed. Brenda Wineapple thrillingly recounts the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which the state of Tennessee ruthlessly pursued young teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution to a high school science class, breaking a law that forbade denial of the book of Genesis. Wineapple’s nuanced storytelling here is fantastic; this isn’t a tale of simple heroes and villains. She thoughtfully contemplates why Southern Protestants in the 1920s were so eager to keep Scopes down due to their fears about their own culture’s moral decline. You’ll be amazed how much this whirlwind tale resonates with the present day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this gripping and expansive reexamination of the Scopes Monkey Trial, a lightning-rod debate over what was allowed to be taught in public schools caps a decades-long run of divisiveness, which eroded Americans' belief in the power of democracy. Historian Wineapple (The Impeachers) depicts the country's contemporaneous obsession with the 1925 trial—in which a Tennessee school teacher fined for teaching the theory of evolution was defended by a fledgling ACLU—as a culmination of decades of upheaval, violence, and inequity, from the Civil War to WWI. Tracing the lives of the trial's prosecutor, William Jennings Bryan, the "de facto voice" of Christian fundamentalism in the country by the 1920s, and its defense attorney, Clarence Darrow—a "lion of the bar" already famous for saving bomb-throwing anarchists and murderers from the electric chair—Wineapple shows how both men, over the course of tumultuous lives that mirror the travails of the country, had developed influential but incompatible notions of democracy. Wineapple's elegant appraisal notably departs from depictions—popularized at the time, especially through the "acerbic" reporting of H.L. Mencken—of the fundamentalists' side as purely buffoonish (a take actually more in line with Darrow's own appraisal of the trial as a "tragedy"). With its obvious parallels to today's battles over public education, and its depiction of a fractious, in-fighting Democratic Party, this historical investigation pulses with urgency.
