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Summer for the Gods
- The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
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Publisher's summary
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 20th 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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"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-Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial)
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"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)
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Fight of the Century
- Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases
- By: Michael Chabon - editor, Ayelet Waldman - editor
- Narrated by: an all-star cast
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization’s 100-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in - Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona - need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now.
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Outstanding
- By Nancy B on 10-06-20
By: Michael Chabon - editor, and others
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The Supreme Court
- The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America
- By: Jeffrey Rosen
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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A leading Supreme Court expert recounts the personal and philosophical rivalries that forged our nation's highest court and continue to shape our daily lives. The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of government, and yet the Court is at root a human institution, made up of very bright people with very strong egos, for whom political and judicial conflicts often become personal.
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Overruled!
- By Stephen McLeod on 08-23-08
By: Jeffrey Rosen
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Unexampled Courage
- The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring
- By: Richard Gergel
- Narrated by: Richard Gergel - introduction, Tom Zingarelli
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America’s civil rights history.
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Well-paced political-legal history woven around the intersecting stories of the 3 title characters
- By Courtney J. Corda on 03-07-19
By: Richard Gergel
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The Great Dissent
- How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind and Changed the History of Free Speech in America
- By: Thomas Healy
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Free speech as we know it comes less from the First Amendment than from a most unexpected source: Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. A lifelong skeptic, he disdained all individual rights, including the right to express one's political views. But in 1919, it was Holmes who wrote a dissenting opinion that would become the canonical affirmation of free speech in the United States.
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How a 78 year old man can learn & change his mind
- By Jean on 09-23-13
By: Thomas Healy
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The Supremes' Greatest Hits, 2nd Revised & Updated Edition
- The 44 Supreme Court Cases That Most Directly Affect Your Life
- By: Michael G. Trachtman
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The Supreme Court's rulings have shaped American life and justice and allowed Americans to retain basic freedoms such as privacy, free speech, and the right to a fair trial. This revised and updated edition of Michael G. Trachtman's riveting work includes 10 important cases from 2010 to 2015.
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Nice review overall.
- By "freeindeed4ever" on 02-10-20
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One Nation Under God
- How Corporate America Invented Christian America
- By: Kevin M. Kruse
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Conventional wisdom holds that America has been a Christian nation since the Founding Fathers. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the idea of "Christian America" is nothing more than a myth - and a relatively recent one at that.
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RELIGION, PATRIOTISM, & MAMMON: A TOXIC DANCE
- By James on 05-01-15
By: Kevin M. Kruse
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The Fire Is upon Us
- James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America
- By: Nicholas Buccola
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event.
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Sadly, the story is timeless.
- By Edward P. Cerne on 01-17-20
By: Nicholas Buccola
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My Own Words
- By: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mary Hartnett, Wendy W. Williams
- Narrated by: Linda Lavin
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book from Ruth Bader Ginsburg since becoming a Supreme Court Justice in 1993 - a witty, engaging, serious, and playful collection of writings and speeches from the woman who has had a powerful and enduring influence on law, women's rights, and popular culture. My Own Words is a selection of writings and speeches by Justice Ginsburg on wide-ranging topics, including gender equality, the workways of the Supreme Court, being Jewish, law and lawyers in opera, and more.
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Spectacularly Dry
- By CMP on 07-27-18
By: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and others
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Speak of the Devil
- How the Satanic Temple Is Changing the Way We Talk About Religion
- By: Joseph P. Laycock
- Narrated by: Thomas Allen
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Speak of the Devil is the first book-length study of The Satanic Temple. Joseph Laycock, a scholar of new religious movements, contends that the emergence of "political Satanism" marks a significant moment in American religious history that will have a lasting impact on how Americans frame debates about religious freedom.
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Excellent book about a misunderstood topic!
- By Deena M Engelmann on 09-24-20
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Imbeciles
- The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
- By: Adam Cohen
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Imbeciles is the shocking story of Buck v. Bell, a legal case that challenges our faith in American justice. A gripping courtroom drama, it pits a helpless young woman against powerful scientists, lawyers, and judges who believed that eugenic measures were necessary to save the nation from being “swamped with incompetence.”
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Compelling Concept, Aggravating Execution
- By Gillian on 04-05-16
By: Adam Cohen
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On May 24, 1869 a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell, and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. The Grand Canyon, not explored before, was as mysterious as Atlantis - and as perilous. The 10 men set out from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, down the Colorado in four wooden rowboats. Ninety-nine days later, six half-starved wretches came ashore near Callville, Arizona.
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Modern references take away
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What listeners say about Summer for the Gods
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- David
- 06-10-21
Still Timely
The legal fight over the teaching of evolution, beautifully described in “Summer for the Gods,” is as timely today as when the book was first published in 1997. For that matter, it could be as timely as when the Scopes trial took place in 1925. The debate over academic freedom and who has the right to determine a school’s curriculum continues, whether the issue is evolution or critical race theory, as author Larson makes clear in a 2016 afterword. Larson spends much of the book debunking myths—William Jennings Bryan was not a buffoon, as in “Inherit the Wind;” Scopes was not out to be a crusader, the ACLU played a huge and often ignored role. Larson's analysis is balanced, explaining clearly the arguments made by all sides. The narration by Brian Troxell was unobtrusive, well done.
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- marc edge
- 06-07-23
Still timely is an appropriate title for this review
This book does a great job representing the debate and continued debate laid forth on the Scopes trial still an issue today.
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- ElJaws
- 06-10-21
Controversy Never Ending
The event explained from a historical perspective. No shortage of interesting tidbits and controversy. Good.
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- Seth Forrestier
- 12-21-23
An unexpected contemplation of Liberty
I was no expecting the authors dive into the social question of Majority Rule V Individual Liberty. I was unaware of the context of this trail, being only informed by the standard narrative.
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- Medina Family
- 02-19-20
A little biased toward evolution
The author is a great writer, but at points his bias toward the evolution side is evident. In his mind evolution = science. In the epilogue this becomes much more obvious when he doesn’t point out that intelligent design proponents complain that science should allow for any explanation that fits the evidence; ruling divine intervention as non admisible a priori is not scientific. The evidence should be followed where it leads. Second, saying that intelligent design proponents do not publish in peer review journals as though they had no scientific qualifications to do so is unfair. Journals will not publish those articles because of bias against intelligent design, and any editor that does would be promptly punished for it. Reports of dismissal and denial of tenure to intelligent design scientists have made news, yet Larson says nothing about this (Guillermo Gonzalez being just one of them). Notice that most intelligent design proponents are not fundamentalists, nor are they all Christian. However, proponents of the model are scientists with PhDs from accredited institutions. They should be allowed a voice.
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2 people found this helpful