Part 3, Chapter 9 Retelling the Story Summary

From 1931 to 1960, the modern Scopes legend arose, helped along by the release of Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties and Inherit the Wind. Only Yesterday was written by Harper's editor Frederick Lewis Allen and published in 1931. In the book, he sought to provide a lively account of the 1920s, and the Scopes trial figured prominently in one of the middle chapters. The trial was presented with an overly simplistic analysis. Allen reduced fundamentalism to anti-evolution and anti-evolution to Bryan. In his account of Darrow questioning Bryan, Allen reconstructed the events and in doing so transformed the event into a defeat for fundamentalism. He argued that fundamentalism declined in response to the trial. In addition, Allen also confused the details of the trial's origin. Other writers followed Allen's unintentional reconstructions and viewed the trial...