Trying Biology

Features the history of biology textbook publishing, education reforms in Tennessee, and progressive school reform across the country. This volume sheds light on the trial and the historical relationship of science and religion in America. It explores how the textbook industry created fresh books and presented them as "responses" to the trial.

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Convincingly dispelling the conventional view of the 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial as simply a conflict between science and religion, Adam R Shapiro places the trial in its broader context - a crucial moment in the history of biology textbook publishing, education reform in Tennessee, and progressive school reform across the country - 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.