In "Trying Biology", Adam R. Shapiro convincingly dispels many conventional assumptions about the 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial. Most view it as an event driven primarily by a conflict between science and religion. Countering this, Shapiro shows the importance of timing: the Scopes trial occurred at a crucial moment in the history of biology textbook publishing, education reform in Tennessee, and progressive school reform across the country. He places the trial in this broad context – alongside American Protestant antievolution sentiment – and in doing so sheds new light on the trial and the historical relationship of science and religion in America. For the first time we see how religious objections to evolution became a prevailing concern to the American textbook industry even before the Scopes trial began. Shapiro explores both the development of biology textbooks leading up to the trial and the ways in which the textbook industry created new books and presented them as "responses" to the trial. Today, the controversy continues over textbook warning labels, making Shapiro's study – particularly as it plays out in one of America's most famous trials – an original contribution to a timely discussion.
About the Author
Adam R. Shapiro is a lecturer in intellectual and cultural history at Birkbeck, University of London.
Reviews
"Building on exhaustive research and probing into such diverse enterprises as textbook production and marketing, public education, and state-level politics, Adam R. Shapiro has situated the Scopes trial within a much broader context than any scholar before him. 'Trying Biology' also demonstrates how ideologues have used differing interpretations of the Scopes trial to advance their agendas. By situating the trial within this much broader framework, the author has significantly enlarged our understanding of the conversations between religion and science in twentieth-century America" – Randall Balmer, author of "The Making of Evangelicalism"
"For decades scholars have been debating how the Scopes trial influenced American biology textbooks. In this meticulously documented and persuasively argued new book, Adam R. Shapiro gives the definitive answer: the antievolution movement that began in the early 1920s had a profound effect on the presentation of evolution; the trial in 1925, very little" – Ronald L. Numbers, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"How did American children learn about evolution? From biology textbooks, of course. Adam R. Shapiro has provided our first truly historical account of the textbook industry and its complicated relationship to evolution instruction in public schools. As Shapiro shows, the Scopes trial was as much about the texts that we read – and the schools where we read them – as it was about Charles Darwin or the Book of Genesis. Shapiro's study is itself a textbook case of careful historical analysis, casting new light on an old controversy. His own readers will surely get a fresh view of the controversy over evolution, and of American education writ large" – Jonathan Zimmerman, New York University
"Adam Shapiro's 'Trying Biology' provides a useful corrective to the stale argument that the Scopes Trial and the antievolution movement in general embodied an eternal conflict between science and religion. Shapiro's account of the battles among textbook authors, publishers, salesmen, and school boards not only adds welcome nuance to our understanding of the trial's causes and consequences, it provides an enlightening and even entertaining look at the crucial role that money and politics have played in the evolution of biology teaching in America. 'Trying Biology' belongs on the short shelf of essential books on Scopes and antievolutionism" – Jeffrey P. Moran, author of "American Genesis: The Antievolution Controversies from Scopes to Creation Science"
"'Trying Biology' is a wonderfully lucid exploration of how the Scopes 'monkey' trial became one of the signature events in the history of science and religion in America. In its focus on how textbooks of biology were published, marketed, sold, and adopted in various political contexts, it provides us with a provocative and novel understanding of how textbooks shaped public understanding of biology and continue to be a political flashpoint of biology education in America. It will prove essential reading for anyone interested in the history of biology, in American education, and in the complex relations between science and religion in America" – Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, University of Florida
