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Title details for Keeping the Faith by Brenda Wineapple - Available

Keeping the Faith

God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

by Brenda Wineapple
Gabra Zackman
Audiobook
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1 of 1 copy available
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Brenda Wineapple’s wonderful account of the Scopes trial sheds light not only on the battles of the past but on the struggles of the present.”—Jon Meacham
“History at its most delicious.”—The New York Times Book Review (front page review, Editors’ Choice)
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

“Propulsive . . . a terrific story about a pivotal moment in our history.”—Ken Burns

ONE OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 13, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593912577
      • File size: 369619 KB
      • Duration: 12:50:01

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 2, 2024
      In this gripping and expansive reexamination of the Scopes Monkey Trial, a lightning-rod debate over what was allowed to be taught in public schools caps a decades-long run of divisiveness, which eroded Americans’ belief in the power of democracy. Historian Wineapple (The Impeachers) depicts the country’s contemporaneous obsession with the 1925 trial—in which a Tennessee school teacher fined for teaching the theory of evolution was defended by a fledgling ACLU—as a culmination of decades of upheaval, violence, and inequity, from the Civil War to WWI. Tracing the lives of the trial’s prosecutor, William Jennings Bryan, the “de facto voice” of Christian fundamentalism in the country by the 1920s, and its defense attorney, Clarence Darrow—a “lion of the bar” already famous for saving bomb-throwing anarchists and murderers from the electric chair—Wineapple shows how both men, over the course of tumultuous lives that mirror the travails of the country, had developed influential but incompatible notions of democracy. Wineapple’s elegant appraisal notably departs from depictions—popularized at the time, especially through the “acerbic” reporting of H.L. Mencken—of the fundamentalists’ side as purely buffoonish (a take actually more in line with Darrow’s own appraisal of the trial as a “tragedy”). With its obvious parallels to today’s battles over public education, and its depiction of a fractious, in-fighting Democratic Party, this historical investigation pulses with urgency.

    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2024

      Historian Wineapple (The Impeachers) examines the history of the infamous 1925 Scopes trial, taking listeners from considerations of the social and political climate of the time through the preparation for the trial and the verdict. Wineapple discusses the key players in the "trial of the century," including fundamentalist Christian prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, defense attorney Clarence Darrow, and the ACLU, which organized Tennessee schoolteacher Scopes's defense for teaching the theory of evolution. Gabra Zackman narrates, skillfully altering her voice to help listeners keep the players straight without taking away from the focus on the historical events. While Wineapple's book is rich in detail, her account is somewhat skewed, with the balance of attention going to Bryan's and the Ku Klux Klan's contributions to the explosive atmosphere at the time. Coverage of Darrow is noticeably thinner and less dynamic. VERDICT Even though some listeners may wish for a more proportional account, this expertly narrated audio sheds light on a key trial that continues to be unsettlingly relevant today. Recommended for those who enjoyed Greg Jarrett's The Trial of the Century.--Richard Winters

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      The Scopes Monkey Trial was settled almost a hundred years ago, but if you think the issues it raised regarding what can be taught in public schools were settled, you're wrong. Brenda Wineapple's history of the trial, its antecedents, and its aftereffects--ably narrated by Gabra Zackman--ties the trial into continuing themes in American culture and politics. Science and religion are only the starting points, and Zackman keeps the story moving, even when filling in the biographies of the two famous antagonists, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. There's no suspense regarding the outcome of the trial, and neither Zackman nor Wineapple overemphasizes connections to our own times, but those connections are there to be made. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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