Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple

Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

by Brenda Wineapple

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History & Foreign AffairsTheology & Faith

A Tennessee schoolteacher's prosecution for teaching evolution was a small-town case. Even so, in Wineapple's words it "raised issues that have perplexed America since its founding and still do today," and you get it through Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan and the crowds and press that descended on Dayton in 1925.

Core ideas
  • Bryan in full: A progressive champion of the poor, he also carried fundamentalist views, scientific ignorance and the prejudices of his era, and was no match for Darrow.
  • Darrow in full: A formidable courtroom fighter against injustice, he was also vain, arrogant and greedy as he led the ACLU-organized defense.
  • A conviction undone: The judge kept the science from the jury, and the state Supreme Court overturned the verdict on a technicality.
Published2024
Pages544
ISBN9780593229927
ReadMay 2025

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