| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennessee, 1870–1925. By Charles A. Israel (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. xii, 252 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8203-2645-3. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8203-2646-1.)

As a media event, the Scopes trial in 1925 was a precursor of a modern phenomenon. Long before twenty-four-hour cable news channels and their captivation with courtroom drama, newspaper and radio reporters across the nation fixated on Dayton, Tennessee, where John Scopes was convicted of violating state law by teaching evolution in public high school. The debate between creationism (or "intelligent design") and evolution continues to fascinate the media, and the Scopes trial is symbolic of that controversy. In Charles A. Israel's perceptive book, this famous trial is best understood not in terms of conflict between science and religion, but as a continuation of evangelicals' engagement with public education—a story of debate and compromise that assumed many forms over the fifty years prior to the spectacle in Dayton.

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