Clarence Darrow
American Iconoclast
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Clarence Darrow is best remembered for his individual cases, whether defending the thrill killers Leopold and Loeb or John Scopes's right to teach evolution in the classroom. In the first full-length biography of Darrow in decades, the historian Andrew E. Kersten narrates the complete life of America's most legendary lawyer and the struggle that defined it, the fight for the American traditions of individualism, freedom, and liberty in the face of the country's inexorable march toward modernity.
Prior biographers have all sought to shoehorn Darrow, born in 1857, into a single political party or cause. But his politics do not define his career or enduring importance. Going well beyond the familiar story of the socially conscious lawyer and drawing upon new archival records, Kersten shows Darrow as early modernity's greatest iconoclast. What defined Darrow was his response to the rising interference by corporations and government in ordinary working Americans' lives: he zealously dedicated himself to smashing the structures and systems of social control everywhere he went. During a period of enormous transformations encompassing the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, Darrow fought fiercely to preserve individual choice as an ever more corporate America sought to restrict it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Relating the life of one of America's most progressive lawyers, Clarence Darrow (1857 1938), Kersten (Race, Jobs, and the War; Politics and Progress) portrays the "Old Lion" as a socially conscious maverick full of contradictions. Born of solid rural Midwestern stock, Darrow started as a real estate, insurance, and collections agent, until his calm, rational style as a lawyer elevated him to prominence. When he moved to Chicago in 1887, he became an influential member of the city's political machine, rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful. But he eventually left them to become "the attorney for the damned," defending unionists, miners, and other members of the working class, as well as lawbreakers and the poor. Kersten, a professor of history and labor studies at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, does not omit Darrow's manic personal life of broken marriages, relationships, and juggling several affairs at once, leaving Kersten to comment: "Darrow lived life fearlessly, sometimes recklessly." In the end, the brilliance and daring of Darrow's legal strategies make this skillful, absorbing biography most riveting, especially with his masterful handling of the controversial Leopold-Loeb case, the unpopular Scopes "monkey trial," and the Sweet case, where a black family defended their home from attacks by their white neighbors.
Customer Reviews
Good read
A little slow. But a great story of a great American.