Summer for the Gods/Inherit The Wind Comparison

Summer For the Gods by Edward Larson and Inherit The Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee are both about the Scopes "monkey trial", although they go about it in very different ways. Summer is non-fiction, a fact-based historical overview of the trial. Inherit is high drama, a courtroom confrontation between two great legal minds. To achieve this drama, Inherit bends the facts a tiny bit. Inherit the Wind was originally a Broadway play, and reads like such. The main characters are loosely disguised substitutes for the actual players in the trial (Matthew Harrison Brady for William Jennings Bryan, Henry Drummond for Clarence Darrow, Bertram Cates for John Scopes), and the influence of Bryan is greatly overstated. It does make an excellent story, though, pitting the agnostic big-city lawyer (Drummond/Darrow) against the populist oratorical lion. The brief historical background provided in the play deepens the divide. Darrow's last case before the trial was that of Leopold and Loeb, where he managed to avoid the death penalty for two teenage murderers, while Bryan is a former Presidential candidate whose shining moment was when he vocalized the complaints of working people all across the country in his "Cross of Gold" speech ("You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold"). The setting of the trial in small-town America, Dayton, Tennessee, also adds a layer of prejudice against Darrow because he is agnostic, which to the townspeople is the same thing as hating God. I found interesting the fact-based/narrative-based contrast between the books. I did not mind that Inherit was partially fictionalized, as it captured the essence of the trial while still being a good story. Finally, in case anyone was wondering, the title of Inherit The Wind comes from the Bible ("He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind", from Proverbs).