Thank you Random House for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, by Brenda Wineapple.

The book has a lot of good background information about Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. I don’t remember knowing how much of a racist that Bryan was. Bryan’s racism is a constant theme of this book, along with while he was on liberal on some issues, he was also very far to the right on others.

The author did a very good job of setting the stage for the trial and giving a lot of background discussion about the time period. But, it almost seemed as the book was more about that than the trial itself.

Overall, I am going to give this book a B+. It was enjoyable and informative enough to get that rating. It was not as good a book on the Scopes trial as Edward Larson’s Summer of the Gods, but on its own merits, it was still a good coverage of the trial, the major characters and the time period.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B+ equates to 4 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on June 28, 2024.