Bryan's and Darrow's ghosts still haunt us, and the Scopes trial still holds resonance, as we continue to litigate the role of religion and public life and the power of the state to prescribe what shall be taught in public schools. Read Summer for the Gods for that well-told story.
-- Rodney A. Smolla New York Times Book Review
In Summer for the Gods, the first full study of the Scopes trial to be published in forty years, Larsen incisively examines the myths surrounding the Scopes trial. His treatment is fresh and authoritative, making good use of the record of the trial, the extensive newspaper and magazine coverage it received, and the private papers of several of the main figures and organizations involved in it...He restores attention to aspects of [the trial] that are commonly overlooked and that reverberate in the contentions of our own day over science and religion in the schools. The originality of his book arises in large part from its thoughtful, evenhanded treatment of both sides in the confrontation--and the seriousness with which he takes the opposing convictions about religion, science, and their relationship to the law that clashed in Dayton...Larson's account of the trial and the legal issues involved in it is particularly illuminating...[He] provides a fascinating account of how the trial became the legend that was eventually passed on by Inherit the Wind...[This is an] excellent book.
-- Daniel J. Kevles New York Review of Books
Edward Larson won the Pulitzer Prize in History for his excellent Summer for the Gods, an investigation into the [Scopes] trial and why it still matters. Get the paperback to get up to speed.
-- New Scientist
A Spencer Tracy film, Inherit the Wind, was based on the [John Scopes Trial] and has shaped popular memories of it. But, as Edward J. Larson shows in this Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, the film's sinister mood is misleading...Larson artfully separates myths from realities to tell a more complicated and convincing story. He also summarizes the continuing efforts of Tennessee and other southern states to keep creationism on the curriculum and evolution off it.
-- Patrick Allitt Times Literary Supplement
This book has already won a Pulitzer Prize, but it's worth calling attention to again...Larson...finds new things to say about the famous "monkey trial" of 1925 and says them well. Among other things, he shows how the trial helped to break down the longstanding intellectual accommodation between Darwinism and Protestant theology, highlights the tensions between celebrity lawyer Clarence Darrow and the rest of John Scopes's defense team, and demonstrates how the enormously influential drama Inherit the Wind significantly warped the trial and its aftermath.
-- Luther Spoehr Providence Journal-Bulletin
Summer for the Gods is, quite simply, the best book ever written on the Scopes trial and its place in American history and myth. The tone is balanced; the research, meticulous; the prose, sparkling.
-- Ronald L. Numbers
Experts will learn much about the background and details of the Scopes trial; the general reader will be drawn into the trial as never before. Inherit the Wind, step aside!
-- Will Provine, Cornell University
Edward Larson tells the true story of the Scopes trial brilliantly, and the truth is a lot more interesting than the myth that was presented to the public in Inherit the Wind.
-- Philip Johnson
Before the Dover, Pa., trial over intelligent design, there was the Scopes monkey trial, which historian Edward Larson retells with exquisite detail and sympathy for those on both sides.
-- Jeremy Manier Chicago Tribune
