Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

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.