The Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes Trial as well as the battle over evolution and creation in America’s schools

In the summertime 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, within a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. That trial designated the beginning of a battle that continues to this day-in metropolitan areas and states through the entire country.

Edward Larson’s traditional Summer for the Gods — champion from the Pulitzer Award ever sold — may be the one most authoritative account of this pivotal event. An afterword assesses the state of the fight between creationism and evolution, and points the way to how it might potentially be solved.