Keeping the Faith

God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

By: Brenda Wineapple

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

“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

“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.

©2024 Brenda Wineapple (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Captivating . . . Keeping the Faith is history at its most delicious, presented free from the musty smell of the archives where it was clearly assembled with great care. And if you have been awake for the past 16 years or so, you won’t miss the point. The struggles of yesteryear between reason and ignorance do not merely illuminate those of the present. They are the same struggle. This is a story from a past that isn’t even past.”—The New York Times

“A briskly told chronicle by Brenda Wineapple, who has a knack for producing popular histories with contemporary resonance.”—The New Yorker

“[A] gripping and expansive reexamination of the Scopes Monkey Trial . . . This historical investigation pulses with urgency.”—Publishers Weekly

Narrator

Wineapple has given life to the cast without succumbing to the devices of historical fiction. She has presented and evenly balanced thoroughly horrifying presentation of a time that is being mirrored almost exactly by our own.

A retelling but with more detail

The Scpes trial is by now a well known story but this book enriches it it with rich detail and presents a truer picture of the events that were heavily fictionalized in the movie Inherit The Wind and and less well told in the book on which the movie was based. And it brings to the fore many of still famous names of the cultural world of the first half of the American century.