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Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion Paperback – June 16, 2020

by Edward J Larson (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 333 ratings
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes Trial and the battle over evolution and creation in America's schools

In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the setting for one of the twentieth century's most contentious courtroom dramas, pitting William Jennings Bryan and the anti-Darwinists against a teacher named John Scopes, represented by Clarence Darrow and the ACLU, in a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. That trial marked the start of a battle that continues to this day-in cities and states throughout the country.

Edward Larson's classic Summer for the Gods -- winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History -- is the single most authoritative account of this pivotal event. An afterword assesses the state of the battle between creationism and evolution, and points the way to how it might potentially be resolved.
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  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    June 16, 2020
  4. Dimensions
    6.05 x 1.15 x 9.25 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1541646037
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1541646032
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Edward Larson . . . tells the Scopes story with clarity and energy. . . . His book may be among the best one-volume primers on an American intellectual twilight."―Boston Globe

"Larson's work is a thoroughly researched, thoroughly readable retelling of the tale. It leaves no subplot or character untouched. And when one considers how powerful the tensions underlying events 72 years ago remain today, Larson deserves hearty thanks. He's reintroducing us to vital history that too quickly transformed into fiction and myth. . . . The Scopes trial is still with us. Larson has elevated its presence from simplified myth to illuminating fact."―Christian Science Monitor

"Larson's account is an unusually balanced and readable treatment of the Scopes trial and its complexities. . . . Even better is Larson's ability to humanize the trial and make it a tale of human folly. . . . The book is a good read about an important and often misunderstood subject. For his achievement, Larson deserves high praise."―D. G. Hart, American Historical Review

"Forget the Lindberg kidnapping trial, the Manson trial, or even the O.J. trial. The real trial of the century was the Scopes Trial, and, although much has been written about it, nothing comes close to the definitive history written by Edward J. Larson."―Skeptic

"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, University of California-Berkeleyand author of Darwin on Trial

"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

"A marvelous remake of the drama in Dayton. Summer for the Gods accomplishes the extraordinary feat of teaching us a good deal that is new about the trial and its significance, including the behind-the-scenes strategizing of the lawyers, the civil liberties stakes in the outcome, and the realities of its impact on the teaching of evolution in the United States."―Daniel J. Kevles, author of The Physicists: The Historyof a Scientific Community in Modern America

"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, University of Wisconsin-Madisonand author, The Creationists

"Larson . . . gracefully documents the history of Darwinism, the theory of evolution and the fits and starts through which evolution became pitted against the Bible and fundamentalist religion. . . . 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 in public life and the power of the state to prescribe what shall be taught in public schools."―New York Times

"Larson brings understanding and perspective to a thorny issue."―Pittsburg Post-Gazette

"Skillfully interweaves the historical with the legal . . . A superbly balanced account, both in narrative as well as analysis. . . . Summer for the Gods provides a thoughtful, reasoned approach to comprehending a deep-rooted culture clash, which, although it might change with each generation, shows little sign of disappearing."―Journal of Southern 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

"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 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

Scholarly, informative . . . fair and meticulous . . . IN some ways, America seems to be only just learning the truth of the Scopes trial and the implications of the debate over evolution. [Larson's] book is a critical piece of the educational process."―First Things

A stunning and well-documented narrative that places the trial in an historical, legal, religious, and scientific context, and then continues beyond to assess its impact on the tension between science and religion that persists right up to the present."―Quarterly Review of Biology

Larson . . . is becoming one of the leading historians of his generation.―Gregg Easterbrook, Washington Monthly

About the Author

Edward J. Larson is the author of twelve books, including The Return of George Washington and The Magnificent Catastrophe, and the recipient of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History. He is the University Professor of History and holds the Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; Revised edition (June 16, 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1541646037
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1541646032
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.05 x 1.15 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 333 ratings

About the author

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Edward J. Larson

Edward J. Larson

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Edward J. Larson is the author of seven books and the recipient of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History for his book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. His other books include Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory; Evolution's Workshop; God and Science on the Galapagos Islands; and Trial and Error: The American Controversy Over Creation and Evolution. Larson has also written over one hundred articles, most of which address topics of law, science, or politics from an historical perspective, which have appeared in such varied journals as The Atlantic, Nature, Scientific American, The Nation, The Wilson Quarterly, and Virginia Law Review. He is a professor of history and law at Pepperdine University and lives in Georgia and California.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
333 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Smith's Rock
5.0 out of 5 stars Literary Nectar for the Gods
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2009
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Summer for the Gods, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history, is a rare and enthralling read. This book about the famous Monkey Trial is probably THE authoritative book on the subject, with 38 pages of references giving testament to author Edward Larson's astoundingly comprehensive approach to what is often referred to as "the trial of the century".

Comprehensive research is always admirable, but is not sufficient to create an outstanding book. Summer for the Gods is far more than a recitation of compulsively excavated historical fact, though if that is what floats your boat, you'll love the book for that alone. What sets the book apart is that slowly, gradually, as you read the tangled web of forces that eventually coalesced to weave the "trial of the century", one realizes that Larson's book is not simply about evolution versus religion: it is about the most populous, complex, and cantankerous of all the primates: Homo sapiens.

The Scopes trial had so many wagons attached to its star (Emerson: "Hitch your wagon to a star") that the rumbling made by their passage raised a dust cloud that has still not settled today. States rights, North versus South, the militant atheism of Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan's grasping at receding fame, intellectual freedom, the upsurge of the novel concept of Biblical literalism, the ACLU ferociously defending civil liberties....the list of issues swirling around the town of Dayton as the trial convened was both long and fascinating.

It might be possible to argue that all GREAT literature serves as a mirror, as opposed to literature that merely informs, titillates, or helps pass a pleasant interlude on a summer day. Summer for the Gods is a high definition mirror, an exquisite reflection on the nature of being human, and a potent reminder that however much we laud our left brain rationale, it is inextricably linked to the mysterious tides of the right brain. A bit too hokey for you? Let me try again: Larson's Summer for the Gods might be the best proof ever that whenever a gargantuan controversy arises, it is NEVER solely about the stated issues. The richness and pathos of Summer for the Gods far transcends the very worthy debate about science versus religion.

Who will like this book? Those who take pride in having a world view that has both depth and breadth will find Summer for the Gods adds considerably to both of these dimensions. Who might not? This book, though quite readable and accessible, is a serious work of scholarship. It is not Inherit the Wind in book form. Some serious reworking of synapses will occur. This can be uncomfortable....and deeply rewarding for the effort expended.

Legal beagles: you'll love it. Historians: you will bow down before it in awe. Champions of academic freedom: you'll both cheer and grind your teeth. Seekers of wisdom: drink this one in to your heart's content. Member of the human race: look in this mirror with both anticipation and trepidation.
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Rodney J. Szasz
4.0 out of 5 stars Making Monkeys Out of Americans
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2003
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This the ultimate book on the Scopes trail and its depressing impact upon the US. If you are expecting a straight read about the forces of repression and ignorance battling the forces of science, reason, and tolerance you will be sadly disappointed. The Scopes trail had nothing to do with basic biology. It was a battle of lawyers, made for and persued by them for their own, at times rather personal motives.
This books chronicles the advent of trial in the Chemists Shop in Dayton Tenessee when a few leading citizens --- neither clever or passionate Darwinians, nor particularly blathering, foaming at the mouth fundamentalists --- unabashed opportunists who wanted to put an declining town on the map with the trial of the century. Scopes over sodas with both sides decides that he will "have a go" at making it a test case as to whether evolution can be taught in Tennessee -- so much for the repression.
From these humble beginnings starts a third rate farce with everyone wanting to get in on the act. Some were legitimate entities, such as the ACLU lawyers -- very dedicated and committed people -- perhaps the true heros of this saga. But others such as Darrow and Bryan, although obviously acting from deeply held emotions offered no basis to defend their beliefs. Darrow offerred little evidence of what we would know as natural selection, and Bryan could not defend his belief in a Biblical interpretation of the creation ofthe earth as given in Genesis.
The real argument became a legal one with Bryan defending the rights of the majority to teach whatever taxpayers thought they wanted to teach (whether it was correct or not!), majoritism, and Darrow defending the right of people to teach scientific based education, because it was unreasonable to teach majority held opinion if it was at odds with elementary understandings of Science. And this is where the debaters dug in their heels.
Bryan, nor anyone else, could prove that Genesis was true. Darrow could prove evolution, but that did not make him correct if the majority of people, choosing ignorance over fact, chose not to believe it.
The book does a good job at describing the minutea of the defence and cross-exacmination, the legal cases of both sides, and the trail itself. It also does a good job in describing the pre and post Scopes legal challenges launched by both causes in America.
Although the creationists were plain wrong, this is not a simple story of the light of science versus a bunch of southern rednecks. There are a lot of interesting vignettes: although Bryan did defend his idea of bible creationism, he was also worried about the evolving "science" of Eugenics and he rightly forsaw the potential to use evolution to relegate people into different classes as result of "proper" and "improper" breeding; some Southern Black churches also defended the prosecution on similar grounds. This was just the beginning of the hayday of Eugenics and Naziism, where transmogrified understandings of Evolution underwrote some horrible ideologies.
This book took the Pulitzer in History. It is not that good in my estimation. Fair and well researched, yes, but at times the narrative drags as Larson gets bogged down in legal historical details (such as the chapter called "Jockeying for Position"). Larson is a lawyer and confines himself to law and history. There is no review of natural selection as it was then interpreted, and, as Larson points out, Darrow had only a vague notion of its intrisic reasonableness. Darrow actually cited and conducted the trail on a largely (mistaken) notion of Lamarkian evolution --- a common enough mistake -- still.
This is a book that I enjoyed, but it didn't set my heart racing. It offers an depressing read on the quintessentially American experience: how a society relatively free, a bastion of most scientific enlightenment and knowledge can allow such ignorance of science to the degree that people actually believe in a literal interpretation of Biblical allegory in the 20th and the 21st Century....and how Americans can allow both to be exploited for political grandstanding.
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Top reviews from other countries

wjcroberts
5.0 out of 5 stars a must read and understand it's topic pros and cons, the issues are still rattling around.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2022
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It is an even handed, well written account of a very important trial, the background of which remain contentious and polarised.
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a
5.0 out of 5 stars and of great current applicability
Reviewed in Canada on August 9, 2017
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Fascinating, and of great current applicability.
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Liam Ostermann
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and readable
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 6, 2024
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Excellent, if not always readable account, of the famous 1925 Scopes trial, and what really happened - a quite important and difficult task because the 'monkey trial' as it is often called, has attracted more misinformation, misunderstanding and down right legends then it is possible for anyone to refute - even on Goodreads one of the most lengthy reviewers says, in flat contradiction to Mr. Larson's book (and the facts) that under the Butler Act of 1925 Scopes, or any other teacher, faced going to gaol for teaching evolution. In fact teaching evolution was only ever a misdemeanour, like parking violation. The most fascinating part of the book is the way it places the trial (which was a set up various citizens of Dayton, Tennessee as a way of gaining publicity and boosting their economically declining town) in the context of its time. Doing this brings all sorts of interesting, and unexpected, issues to light. For example The anti-evolutionists, and Williams Jennings Bryan in particularly, were anti-evolution and anti-Darwin because of the opposition to the new fangled eugenics movement.

The book is particularly strong in its presentation of how the trial was presented and used from the 1930s through the 1960s and how it was used as way of condemning and fighting McCarthyism, particularly in the version presented in the play and film 'Inherit the Wind' which, although it's heart was in the right place in terms of McCarthyism, had as much to do with what really happened as 'The Crucible' is an accurate presentation of Salem witch trials.

As a UK reader my quibble about it's readability really refers to the opening chapters which set the seen in terms of what many religious groups in the USA thought about evolution. It is heavy with names and organisations that are not just unknown but alien to us. But is worth persevering through any longeurs to allow the book to get into the trial proper, and the background proves in the end to be relevant and vital to the story.

I think anyone reading the book who has not grown up in the USA will constantly feel baffled at the way so many religious people in the United States are obsessed with insisting that the Bible is literally true. No poetics, no metaphor, if it says God created the world in 7 days of 24 hours, even if the sun wasn't created till day 4, and on and on through so many other absurdities. As someone raised a catholic and who attended schools run by catholic religious orders it is even more baffling. The Catholic church is crammed full of bizarre beliefs but even the infallible pope has never asked us to believe in the word accuracy of the Bible. I can remember many years ago, when I was a student, meeting two members of Opus Dei (if you aren't aware of it looking for free thinker member of Opus Dei is like searching for a civil libertarian amongst the Klu Klux Klan) both of them scientist dealing with research concerning evolution. They had no problem with combining science and a theological outlook that positively medieval. But they would never have thought it necessary to insist that the book of genesis was a accurate description of the world was created.

Of course explaining why so many people in the USA are obsessed with denying that the earth is more then a few thousand years old is not the point of this book. It would a different and far longer book to try and do that. For those of us not from the USA it will always be difficult to quite grasp why the issues behind the Scopes trial was, and remains, so important.
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K. Harbottle
5.0 out of 5 stars 2010, and still depressed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 30, 2010
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Have just finished this wonderful book. Not only does it give an accurate portrayal of events and the chief protagonists, not only does it debunk the "Inherit the Wind" myths (although fine film in it's own right as entertainment), but it does it using beautiful prose. This book is a masterpiece. Its depressing that in 2010, a sizeable proportion of Christian American still believe the Bronze Age Genesis myths, and still believe that evolution is only a theory, not fact.
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Marc Lemaire
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story but a little bit too long
Reviewed in Canada on August 23, 2019
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This book covers in much details the Scopes trial on this interesting question : can a State demand that its teachers teach the Darwin Evolution theory simultaneously with the Creationist theory, as if both were on the same level of truth. However, the author goes into too many details which are not really that interesting, about the town where the trial took place, its inhabitants, the numerous lawyers that came and went, and so on, and we are left with a strange taste in the end, that of a promise unfulfilled : how and when will this strange debate end?
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