Mano Singham

This extremely readable book surveys the legal battles that have taken place in the US as various agencies of the devout have attempted, despite the First Amendment, to get the teaching of the Creationist fantasy into the public schools either in place of or alongside the theory of evolution by natural selection -- Darwinism, to use the slightly misleading shorthand. Although there are introductory chapters discussing the reception Darwin's dangerous idea got in the US, both initially and after the devout had had time to think about its implications, essentially God vs. Darwin is bookended by the Scopes Trial of 1925 and the Dover Trial of 2005, with discussion in between of several other significant court battles, including Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) and Edwards v. Aguillard (1987). There was a lot in all this that I'd come across before, of course, while I was writing Discarded Science and Corrupted Science, but the approach was something of a change (for me) and, refreshingly, there was stuff I hadn't known much about -- like the behind-the-scenes shenanigans leading up to the Scopes Trial: I'd known these were, um, quirky, but not quite how quirky! And, anyway, even had the book contained nothing new to me I'd have kept going: the author has a very engaging style that made this book a joy to read.

My only complaint? There are quite a few text boxes in the book, of which many are serving little useful function. I don't know if Singham was told by his publisher that there had to be something to add visual interest to the text, or if perhaps the worry was that the book was too short and needed some bumping out. Either way, boxes like "Questions Darrow Might Ask Bryan Today" (p48) and "What Might Darwin have Thought about the Turmoil His Work Aroused across the Atlantic?" (p147) seem to be mere distractions, bad ideas dreamt up in a pub somewhere. And, as regards those text boxes that do have something of value to add -- like "Excerpts from Clarence Darrow's Questioning of William Jennings Bryan" (pp43-46) -- my immediate thought was: why not just incorporate this stuff into the main text, which is where it really belongs?

That aside, I found the book a great pleasure -- much recommended.… (altro)