Free Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson Page A

History
     
     
    “Larson unlocks the past and renders it gracefully accessible in a narrative style that is easy to follow, despite the complexity of the intellectual currents and counter-currents of his theme.”
     
    — Los Angeles Times
     
     
    “Larson’s narrative manages to convey the complexity of the legal issues as well as the drama of the event in a fluid and focused manner.”
     
    — Journal of American History
     
     
    “The real story of the Scopes trial, it turns out, is more interesting, more mischievous, and more perverse than the complacent received wisdom. A historian of science and a lawyer, Professor Larson has written a devastatingly good book.”
     
    — Michigan Law Review
     
     
    “Larson has done a wonderful job of writing an engaging yet scholarly account of the issues surrounding this trial.”
     
    — Choice
     
     
    “Larson writes with clarity, insight, and poignancy for our times as well as for this past history.”
     
    —Library Journal
     
     
    “Much more than a lively, informative piece of historical reconstruction and criticism: It is as relevant to present controversies as it would have been in the 1920s.... a scholarly, extremely well-documented, engrossing narrative that is accessible to a general audience.”
     
    — Bioscience
     
     
    “Magnificent reconstruction of the Scopes trial and its significance.”
     
    — Church History
     
     
    “A gripping narrative.”
     
    — Books & Culture
     
     
    “An engagingly written book that not only sets the record straight about the Scopes trial and the events surrounding it, but also shows how one of the most famous cases in U.S. judicial history became an enduring legend.”
     
    — America
     
     
    “Larson’s style will capture readers and pull them into the story.”
     
    — Church History
     
     
    “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.”
     
    — Amazon.com
     
     
    “Larson both challenges and enables history teachers to rethink their teaching of the Scopes trial, McCarthyism, and the role of popular culture in shaping perceptions of historical events.”
     
    — History Teacher
     
     
    “‘The most widely publicized misdemeanor case in American history.’ That is Edward J. Larson’s description of the ‘monkey trial’ in his 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion . With that debate again at a rolling boil, that book by Larson, professor of history and law at the University of Georgia, demonstrates that the trial pitted a modernism with unpleasant dimensions against a religious fundamentalism that believed, not without reason, that it was faithful to progressive values.”
     
    — Newsweek
     
     
    “Edward Larson’s training both in legal history and in the history of science serves him well in Summer for the Gods .... Larson unlocks the past and renders it gracefully accessible in a narrative style that is easy to follow, despite the complexity of the intellectual currents and counter-currents of his theme.”
     
    — The Los Angeles Times Book Review
     
     
    “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.”
     
    — Booklist
     
     
    “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 [are] particularly illuminating ... [He] provides a fascinating account of how the trial became the legend that was eventually passed on by