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God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation
by Brenda Wineapple
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.
"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.
"[A] gripping and expansive reexamination of the Scopes Monkey Trial ... This historical investigation pulses with urgency." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The notorious 'monkey trial' in expert hands." —Kirkus Reviews
"A briskly told chronicle by Brenda Wineapple, who has a knack for producing popular histories with contemporary resonance." —The New Yorker
"A definitive account of the 1925 trial ... But more important, Wineapple's book provides a vivid account of how fear has always acted on our national consciousness—and a way of coming to terms with our own fractured political present... . Outstanding." —The Atlantic
"A brilliant account of the Scopes trial, as fair-minded as it is well written, as compelling as it is richly detailed—and as relevant to today's America as it is faithful to the America of a century ago." —Geoffrey C. Ward, author of A First-Class Temperament
"Brenda Wineapple's wonderful account sheds light not only on the battles of the past but on the unfolding struggles of the urgent present." —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of And There Was Light
This information about Keeping the Faith was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Brenda Wineapple's books include The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, selected by a New York Times critic as one of the ten best nonfiction works of 2019; Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848–1877, a New York Times Notable Book; and White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize, among other honors, Wineapple has also received three National Endowment Fellowships, including its Public Scholars Award. She writes regularly for such publications as The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2023, she was selected a Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
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