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

Inherit the Wind ... [This is an] excellent book.”
     
    —The New York Review of Books
     
     
    “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
     



In memory of my father, Rex Larson, a Darrowlike criminal lawyer
     
     
    and
     
     
    William H. Ellis, Jr., a Bryanesque attorney-politician
     

PREFACE
     
    THE SCOPES TRIAL has dogged me for more than a decade, ever since I wrote my first book on the American controversy over creation and evolution. The trial only constituted one brief episode in the earlier book, yet people who knew of my work asked me more about that one event than everything else in the book combined—and they would tell me about the Scopes trial and what it meant to them. Over the years, their questions and comments led me to reflect on the so-called trial of the century. Finally, one of my colleagues, Peter Hoffer, suggested that I write a separate book solely about the trial and its place in American history. The idea made immediate sense. As a historical event and topic of legend, the trial had taken on a life and meaning of its own independent of the overall creation-evolution controversy. Indeed, this book is different from my earlier one in that they chronicle remarkably separate stories. Both are tales worth telling as stories of our time. Furthermore, no historian had examined the Scopes trial as a separate study in decades. I had access to a wealth of new archival material about the trial not available to earlier historians, and the benefit of additional hindsight.
     
    Many helped me to conceptualize, research, and write this book. A few also assisted me with my first book, particularly my former teachers and current friends Ronald Numbers and David Lindberg. Some I met in the course of my earlier work, such as Bruce Chapman, Richard Cornelius, Edward Davis, Gerald Gunther, Phillip Johnson, William Provine, George Webb, and John West. Others were my colleagues at the University of Georgia, including Betty Jean Craige, Thomas Lessl, Theodore Lewis, William McFeely, Bryant Simon, Phinizy Spalding, Lester Stephens, and Emory Thomas. Finally, I benefited immensely from ongoing advice and encouragement from my editors at Basic Books, Juliana Nocker, Steven Fraser, and Michael Wilde. My thanks go to all of them.
     
    Numerous institutions assisted me by providing research materials and support for this project. Among the sources for research material, I particularly want to acknowledge my debt to the American Civil Liberties Union, Bryan College, the Library of Congress, Princeton University Libraries, the Tennessee State Archives, the University of Tennessee Libraries, and Vanderbilt University Libraries. I owe a special debt to Carolyn Agger for allowing me access to the Fortas Papers. Early and ongoing support came from sources within the University of Georgia, including two Senior Faculty Research