Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion

Summary

Larson revisits the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, where a teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution and where William Jennings Bryan faced Clarence Darrow. He separates the actual courtroom events from the mythology created by journalists and later by the play Inherit the Wind. The book uses the trial to trace an enduring American conflict between science and religious belief in public education.