[Review] John Thomas Scopes: A Biography
Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Publisher Founding: September 1, 2014
Publisher Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Publication: Critical Science Newswire
Original Link: https://ncse.ngo/review-john-thomas-scopes-biography
Publication Date: July 18, 2024
Organization: National Center for Science Education
Organization Description: The National Center for Science Education promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence. One day, students of all ages will be scientifically literate, teachers will be prepared and empowered to teach accurate science, and scientific thinking and decision-making will ensure that all life can thrive and overcome challenges to our shared future.
By Glenn Branch
Author Randy Moore “has provided readers with a solid overview of the life of this famous figure in the American struggle to come to terms with Darwin,” our reviewer writes.
As we anticipate the centenary of the Scopes trial next year, it is instructive to reflect on the hundreds of books, articles, and essays (not to mention a play and a Hollywood film) that have been published about this notable American court case. The only significant gap in our knowledge has been a biography of John Thomas Scopes (1900–1970), an understandable omission considering his reticence, until the last decade of his life, to comment about the trial or himself to any great extent. Overshadowed by Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan, and others, the individual listed as “defendant” on the court docket has remained a poorly understood figure.
In his new book, biologist Randy Moore, well known for his efforts to bring the story of the Scopes trial to a general audience, has provided readers with a solid overview of the life of this famous figure in the American struggle to come to terms with Darwin. In order to achieve this result, Moore has assembled a jigsaw puzzle of sources, including newspaper articles, interviews with family members, Scopes’s own autobiography, and various accounts of the trial itself. He thus ferrets out sufficient information to reconstruct his subject’s life to a significant degree. We learn, for example, that his father was a leftish free-thinker, an outlook adopted by the son at an early age that was influential in his willingness to stand trial in Dayton. Discussions of his career as a petroleum geologist and his challenges as a husband and father provide much of interest, although the trial remains, as it did for Scopes, a constant presence. Equally important is the account of Scopes’s decision to become a public figure in the wake of the play (and later film) Inherit the Wind, which ultimately led to his co-authored autobiography, Center of the Storm, published a few years before his death. As Moore admits, his portrait remains incomplete, largely because of the spotty nature of the source material. Yet he provides his readers with an intriguing glimpse into the life of the figure at the center of the famous “Monkey Trial” of 1925.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, or the author(s), and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors copyright their material, as well, and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 