Summer For The Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, Larson - B+

                      In 1913, an Englishman discovered the fossilized remains of 'Piltdown Man,' who many believed was the 'missing link' confirming Darwin's theory of evolution. As the evidence in favor of evolution accumulated, there was a a fundamentalist backlash in the US.  Science and religion had clashed throughout the second half of the 19th century as many thought that "Darwin's denial of design in nature was virtually the denial of God." As more Americans attended high school, particularly in the south, evolution as discussed in the textbook 'Civil Biology' ran up against the anti-evolution crusaders.  Led by William Jennings Bryan, many Protestants moved militantly to  the right. The Great Commoner toured the country honing his 'Menace of Darwinism' speech.  "In his crusade to rally people against teaching evolution, Bryan was nearly omnipresent." Tennessee was the first state to pass an anti-evolution statute in the spring of 1925. The ACLU immediately announced it would defend any teacher prosecuted in the state. The small town of Dayton was looking for some publicity and business, and hatched the idea of being the locale for the test case of the new law. John Scopes, who taught math and physics, and was substituting for the regular biology teacher agreed to be the defendant in the state's prosecution. In essence, one of the most famous trials in American history was created by boosters looking to promote their small town. Bryan, who hadn't practiced law in decades, volunteered to prosecute Scopes. Clarence Darrow, the country's best-known defense counsel, volunteered to defend Scopes. What had started as a narrow case about constitutionality and a legislature's right to control schools,  would now be a nationally followed circus placing religion in a battle with anti-religion. It was now a bible-thumping orator versus an agnostic who believed religion to be the root of much evil. Educators across the north criticized the law, and both Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw weighed in from Europe. The trial began July 10th. 

                    With temperatures approaching 100 degrees, Judge John Raulston allowed all to dispense with coats and ties. After a very long opening prayer, the jury was selected in a few hours. Darrow later said that "it was obvious after a few rounds that the jury would be unanimously hot for Genesis." The next three days were spent on the defense's motion to dismiss.  Darrow's argument was that the statute was unconstitutional in that it established a particular religious viewpoint and the Tennessee constitution assured that people "could worship according to their own conscience." The motion was denied. The prosecution's case rested after four students testified that Scopes used the offending 'Civil Biology' textbook to teach evolution. Days were spent debating the prosecution's motion to exclude defense's expert testimony, which was intended to show that evolution and religion were not mutually exclusive. Bryan dueled Dudley Malone of New York in an absolutely brilliant debate which garnered nationwide attention. Succumbing to political pressure, the judge denied the defense's witnesses the opportunity to testify. Darrow called Bryan as an expert on the Bible as his only witness. The ensuing examination was a debate between the two giants with Darrow trying to catch Bryan on his literal reading of the Bible. Darrow peppered him about Jonah and the whale, Cain's wife, and Joshua causing the sun to stand still. Darrow got the better of Bryan, but to no avail. Raulston ordered that Bryan's testimony be struck. Darrow cynically suggested the court instruct the jury to find the defendant guilty, rested his case and waived closing arguments. Scopes was found guilty and the judge assessed a $100 fine.

                     As Bryan never had the chance to present his closing argument, he stayed in Dayton fine-tuning his 15,000 word speech. He died in his sleep a few days later. Dayton returned to normal. Scopes left for graduate school at the University of Chicago. He declined all opportunities to capitalize on his fame. The state appeals court narrowly upheld the statute, but overturned the conviction of Scopes because the judge, and not the jury, had imposed the fine. Arguing over who had prevailed continued for decades. Frederick Lewis Allen, a journalist, wrote a history of the 1920's called 'Only Yesterday.' It was a bestseller and a college textbook for fifty years. Allen depicted the trial as part of a decline in older values and a clear defeat for the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists did not abandon their faith, but "set about constructing a separate subculture with independent religious, educational, and social institutions. By the 1940's, a fundamentalist subculture had formed in the United States, with a creationist scientific establishment of its own." In the 1950's, many began to consider the trial as a foreshadowing of the Red Scare and McCarthyism. This consideration inspired the play and movie 'Inherit The Wind.' It was not history, just very good theater. It honored Darrow too much and unfairly eviscerated Bryan. The 1960's saw Tennessee repeal the anti-evolution statute. Fundamentalism has prospered in the last half century and by the 1990's, the mission was to allow creationism to be treated as an equal theory with evolution. In 2011, Tennessee passed a law called the Academic Freedom Statute, encouraging teachers to be skeptical about evolution and climate change. As the law included a non-religious issue, climate change, and because of the composition of the Supreme Court, the law has not been challenged. Roughly 40% of the American population believes God created man in the last 10,000 years. "The Scopes narrative of fundamentalism versus modernity, majority rule versus individual rights, and science versus religion remains fresh not only because  of the antievolution campaign, but also because of opposing demands for and against reproductive, LBGT+, and gun rights. Pitched battles over climate science compound the issue while partisan politics, conspiracy theories, fake news, and social media reinforce cultural divides." This book received a Pulitzer Prize in the late 1990's and has an updated  2020 Afterword.

                   

The Vienna Writers Circle, Maetis - B

                     This novel is set in Austria's capital just after the Anschluss. The most compelling aspect of the book is its ability to portray the anxiety, stress and fear that takes over the Jewish population. Johannes and Mathias are cousins, both married to Catholics and both working as writers. It becomes increasingly clear that something must be done as the noose tightens. They opt to change their identities and move to different parts of the city. Their social interactions become severely proscribed and life returns to some sense of normalcy. The outbreak of war has little effect on Vienna. But the SS man on the lookout for Jews, Heinrich  Schnabel, is as relentless as Inspector Javert and keeps investigating and pursuing what he believes is a group with false papers. He catches Johannes in 1942. Johannes is sent to Sobibor but a letter he carries from his literary agent saves his life when he begins to help the deputy commandant who had submitted a draft of a novel to the same agent. Schnabel's diligent pursuit eventually leads him to Mathias, who manages to turn the tables on him. And although Mathias is captured by the Gestapo, he uses the money that Schnabel had stolen to negotiate his way to Switzerland. Very few Austrian Jews survived the Holocaust, and the fact that both cousins, their families, and most of their circle live until 1945 strains credulity.

A Fever In The Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot To Takeover America, and The Woman Who Stopped Them, Egan - B+

                  In the mid-1920's, three governors, fifteen senators, and seventy five congressmen were Klansmen. "But the epicenter was Indiana, which was trying to shape human behavior as no state had ever done." It passed the first eugenics law. The Klan's vigilantes helped enforce the harshest anti-alcohol laws outside of the Muslim world. The state was known as the Alabama of the north. It was not just Blacks that the Klan was trying to suppress, but also Jews, Catholics of any ethnicity, and Eastern Europeans, Greeks, and Asians. The man who ran the Klan in Indiana, D.C. Stephenson, made more money than Babe Ruth, expected to be appointed to the U.S. Senate, and was a violent womanizer. His downfall would be his mistreatment of a young woman in her late 20's.

                The terror and violence wreaked upon freed slaves by the KKK after the Civil War was short-lived. The federal government fought back and the Klan was disbanded just a few years after it had been formed. The 20th century rebirth grew from the populist-nativist response to the wave of immigration around the turn of the century. The Klan was sold as the "Main Street guardian against immorality, immigrants and their foreign faiths, and African Americans who were rebelling against Jim Crow." Stephenson saw the financial opportunity afforded by the Klan's $10 entry fee and quarterly dues, and began to grow the KKK in Indiana, a deeply Protestant and conservative state. Soon Klan vigilantes were acting as the state's morality police. The Klan had millions of members around the country and its leaders dreamed of gaining control of the federal government, rolling back the civil rights amendments and restricting certain religions. They spewed vitriol and hatred in their quest to preserve white Protestantism. Stephenson was a bigamist, wife-beater, cheater, deadbeat, and a liar, who somehow charmed his way to the top of the KKK pyramid. The Klan paraded frequently, and beat, harassed, and occasionally murdered those whom they didn't like.

                Nineteen twenty-four saw the KKK at its high water mark in the US and in Indiana. Stephenson decided to take on Notre Dame University. On a Friday night in May, thousands of Klansmen descended on South Bend. Their parade was stopped by a flying wedge of young students who broke up the Klan's march and sent them scurrying off. The next day's Chicago papers carried the headline "Students Rout Klansmen." In Washington, the incredibly racist and restrictive National Origins Act was signed by President Coolidge. Throughout the country, the Klan rolled up electoral success after success. In Indiana, the governor, and all of the state's politicians owed their offices to the Klan and Stephenson. They offered him an almost feudal loyalty and homage.

               Madge Oberholtzer lived four blocks from Stephenson in an affluent suburb of Indianapolis. She worked for the state, and a Klan sponsored bill would cost her her job. So she befriended Stephenson in an attempt to save it. He asked her over one Sunday, and his henchmen forced alcohol down her throat. He beat her, bit her all over her body, and raped her. She took poison in response. Stephenson's men left her at her parent's home. Knowing she was dying, she swore out a declaration accusing Stephenson of the crimes he had committed. He was indicted based on the affidavit and soon thereafter, Madge died. The local prosecutor was one of the two or three Republican officeholders who was not in Stephenson's pocket. Stephenson and two of his men were arrested for second degree murder and held without bail.

             The indictment and the publication of the declaration began the process of chipping away at the Klan's supremacy in the state. The national chapter had broken with the Indiana Klan and Stephenson a year previously. The trial was held later in the year 1925. The judge admitted Madge's dying declaration, thus sealing Stephenson's fate. Although the Klan attempted to bribe the jurors, a guilty verdict came on Nov. 25th. The sentence was life, and the Grand Dragon was sent off to the state penitentiary in Michigan City.  

            Around the country, leading Klansmen were being sent to jail, and in Kansas the Klan was banned. In the three years after Stephenson's conviction, national KKK membership dropped by 90%. That said, the Klan had achieved Prohibition, the disenfranchisement of Blacks and the anti-immigration law. Perhaps it died out because it had succeeded. As for Stephenson, he died in 1966, a decade after being released from prison.

             I have read about Prohibition, and the post-WWI Red scare, but knew absolutely nothing about the KKK in the 1920's. This has been an eye-opener. The comparison between the KKK of a hundred years ago and today's MAGA movement is obvious. Only this time, the Catholic church is lined up with the right-wing insiders and is no longer an outcast.

Killing Moon, Nesbo B+

                     This is the latest in the long-running series about Harry Hole. We find him in LA, broke, and trying to drink himself to death. When a woman he has befriended needs financial assistance to stay away from debt collectors,  Harry accepts an offer to return to Oslo to work on a murder investigation. He is hired by a man with connections to two young woman, whom Harry concludes were the victims of a serial killer. He collects a team and uses his many contacts with the Oslo police to run a parallel investigation. As good as the collective skills of the police are, Harry's are just a bit better. He outwits the killer in a brilliant move on the rooftop of the police HQ's. The author remains at the top of his game with the plotting, and there may even be hope that Harry stops drinking.

My Father's House, O'Connor - B

                      This the first novel in a trilogy featuring Msgr. Hugh O'Flaherty, an Irish priest assigned to the Vatican. The time is late 1943, after the Germans had occupied Rome in September.  O'Flaherty arranges for downed Allied airmen, escaped POW's and Jews to hide in and around the Vatican. He recruits locals and plans an escape for Christmas Eve. Hundreds are hustled out to the countryside. The Gestapo know the Monsignor is behind it and desire to capture him, but he never leaves the Vatican. Although a novel, this is a true story. Msgr. O'Flaherty is believed to have saved 6,500 souls during the war, was knighted by Great Britain, and honored by all of the Allied powers.

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Attia

                      A Stanford trained cancer surgeon has turned his focus to longevity and fighting the Four Horsemen: heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and type 2 diabetes.  His goal is "to create an actionable operating manual for the practice of longevity." The focus is on  healthspan, a potentially longer life, but one without cognitive, physical, and emotional decline. The four keys are exercise, nutrition, sleep, and social involvement. I skipped the science and focused on personal take-aways.

Death of a Dancing Queen, Giarratano - C

                     This novel is set in New Jersey and features a recent college graduate trying to become a private investigator. Her grandfather has a license and she is supposed to be apprenticing under him. He's just an old drinker and Billie is on her own. She's investigating the murder of a co-ed who was running a podcast and looking into the murder of a dancer three decades ago. Weak plot, tepid writing, and I'm not even sure whodunit and am hard pressed to care.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, Lewis - B

                     In 2019, the Economist and Johns Hopkins University partnered on the creation of Global Health Security Index. The US was ranked number one in its ability to manage a health crisis. As it turned out, with 4% of the world's population, we suffered 20% of the world's fatalities during the pandemic. This is part of the story of our underperformance.

                     The United States began to plan for a deadly pandemic in 2005, in response to concerns raised by Pres. Bush after he read a book about the 1919 Spanish Flu. The task was assigned to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  There were very few people in or out of government focused on pandemic prevention, and those who were planned on stopping disease from coming into the country. The few who truly understood the issue knew that the social transmission of illnesses was the real problem.  Containment needed to be the plan.

                   On January 24, 2020, the first American, someone who had just returned from Wuhan, was diagnosed with Covid. A loose knit group of  physicians and scientists (they called themselves the Wolverines*) who had studied this type of outbreak concluded that the US could be facing a million deaths if their back of the envelope calculations were correct. The CDC was downplaying the risk. This handful of professionals were the only informed people truly frightened. The Wolverines, some of whom had worked in the Bush and Obama administrations, had no access to power in Trump's Washington and could not pass on their concerns and recommendations to anyone. Soon, the government began to pay some attention to them. There was no testing ability outside of the CDC's main office, and the CDC didn't seem to think front line testing was important. Only in California, because of Charity Dean, the number two in the Department of Health, was there any response to the pandemic. Gov. Newsom ordered a stay at home directive in mid-March. Joe Derisi, who ran a search lab set up by the Zuckerberg's built the first test in a matter of days. In Washington, the president told the states they were on their own. By the summer, California was leading the country in Covid testing.

                 The entity that should have prepared the US for a pandemic, and then managed our response, was the Centers For Disease Control. They, of course, did not. The reason is that decades earlier, the director who insisted on the Swine Flu vaccinations, which caused a number of deaths, was fired after there was no pandemic. The directorship became a political appointment and the CDC became risk averse and lost its way. 

* Carter Mecher (VA), Charity Dean (Calif. Dept. of Health), Duane Caneva (DHS), Richard Hatchett (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority), James Lawler ( US Navy), Michael Callahan ( Mass. General), Joseph Derisi (Chan Zuckerberg Biohub) - partial listing.

The Tenant, Enberg - B

                      This novel is a police procedural set in modern Copenhagen. Jeppe is the lead detective on a case involving the murder of a young woman in the ground floor apartment of a three-story building. She is found by the tenant from the second floor unit, who has a heart attack upon finding young Julie.  Jeppe's quest, which is complicated by the fact that he is barely recovered from a divorce,  takes him into the city's literary scene, as the landlord of the building and others share writings they are working on on a writer's help blog. The landlord penned the murder that took place downstairs. Pretty good read.

Stay Awake, Goldin - C

                     Formulaic is the word that pops up when reading this book. Liv wakes up in a taxi on the way to Brooklyn, has no idea where she has been, and has no cell phone or wallet. As it turns out, she suffers from  amnesia/insomnia and has no recollection of the previous two years. She is being framed for two murders from then and for another one now. Thanks to her keeping her wits under pressure, and more importantly to a savvy NYC detective, the perpetrator is found and brought to justice. Simply not that good.