The Great Monkey Trial

Infobox Book |
name = The Great Monkey Trial
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Dust-jacket for "The Great Monkey Trial"
author = L. Sprague deCamp
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
subject = History
publisher = Doubleday
release_date = 1968
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages = 538 pp
isbn = 0-385-04625-1
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"The Great Monkey Trial" is a 1968 book on the Scopes Trial by L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardcover by Doubleday. This history of the trial was based on the memoirs of John T. Scopes, the archives of the A.C.L.U., assorted newspaper files, correspondence and interviews with dozens of those present at the trial, books and magazine articles written on trial (including the official record of the trial in the Rhea County Courthouse), and a couple of visits to Dayton.

De Camp breathed life into the trial transcript by adding vocal inflections, facial expressions, gestures and movement, as well as various crowd comments and reactions not found in the trial transcript. Chapter titles such as "The Challenge", "The Crusade" and "The Champion Falls" add a decidedly military flavor to the story. Literary quotations are provided at the start of each chapter and it is insightful that for "Single Combat", the chapter detailing the cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan by Clarence Darrow, that De Camp chose a quotation from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass" where Alice and the Queen talk about believing impossible things. For de Camp, the trial was a battle in "a conflict between two sets of ideas"; the "theistic" and the "materialistic" or "mechanistic." fix|link=Wikipedia:Contents|text=citation needed

Reviewers praised de Camp's writing style while paying less attention to his arguments. Some have held that what de Camp accomplished was to both replicate the ridicule associated with the trial by detailing the circus atmosphere and legitimate the legacy of ridicule. Though he avoided taking an extreme position, de Camp's subtle approach was as effective in its time and place as the barbs offered by Darrow and H. L. Mencken during the trial.

References

* Bernabo, Lawrance; Celeste Michelle Condit (1990). "Two Stories of the Scopes Trial: Legal and Journalistic Articulations of the Legitimacy of Science and Religion" in "Popular Trials: Rhetoric, Mass Media, and the Law", edited by Robert Hariman. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 55-85, 204-18.
*cite book | last=Laughlin | first=Charlotte | coauthors=Daniel J. H. Levack | title=De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography | location=San Francisco | publisher=Underwood/Miller | pages=62 | date=1983