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

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

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.

Story Locale:1910s-1920s America; Dayton, Tennessee

Publication History:HC Fall '24
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Brenda Wineapple is the author of seven books including The Impeachers, selected by a New York Times book critic as one of the ten best nonfiction works of 2019; Ecstatic Nation, a New York Times ‘Notable Book’; and White Heat, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting, and a Pushcart Prize, she has also received three National Endowment Fellowships including its Public Scholars Award. Her essays and reviews regularly appear in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2023, she was selected a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

Author Residence: New York, NY

Author Hometown: Boston, MA