The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow - by Donald McRae (Paperback)

About the Book

"Wonderfully evocative... Donald McRae captures the Great Defender in all his complexity.... A joy to read." -- Kevin Boyle, National Book Award-winning author of Arc of Justice

"Astonishingly vivid." --James Tobin, Award-winning author of Ernie Pyle's War

The story of the three dramatic trials that resurrected the life and career of America's most colorful--and controversial--defense attorney: Clarence Darrow. Many books, plays, and movies have covered Darrow and the trials of Leopold and Loeb, John T. Scopes, and Ossian Sweet before: Geoffrey Cowan's The People v. Clarence Darrow; Simon Baatz's For the Thrill of It; Kevin Boyle's Arc of Justice; Meyer Levin's Compulsion and the film adaptation of the same name; Inherit the Wind; but few, if any, have achieved the intimacy and immediacy of Donald McRae's The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow.

Book Synopsis

"Wonderfully evocative... Donald McRae captures the Great Defender in all his complexity.... A joy to read." -- Kevin Boyle, National Book Award-winning author of Arc of Justice

"Astonishingly vivid." --James Tobin, Award-winning author of Ernie Pyle's War

The story of the three dramatic trials that resurrected the life and career of America's most colorful--and controversial--defense attorney: Clarence Darrow. Many books, plays, and movies have covered Darrow and the trials of Leopold and Loeb, John T. Scopes, and Ossian Sweet before: Geoffrey Cowan's The People v. Clarence Darrow; Simon Baatz's For the Thrill of It; Kevin Boyle's Arc of Justice; Meyer Levin's Compulsion and the film adaptation of the same name; Inherit the Wind; but few, if any, have achieved the intimacy and immediacy of Donald McRae's The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow.

From the Back Cover

One of the most famous, if controversial, lawyers in America, defense attorney Clarence Darrow was sixty-seven years old in 1924. His reputation was in tatters after a scandalous trial in Los Angeles and his life and career appeared almost over. Then, in rapid succession, he found himself at the forefront of three remarkable courtroom dramas. Each was dubbed "the Trial of the Century" by the press: the trial of teenage Chicago "thrill killers" Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Tennessee's infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, later immortalized in the play Inherit the Wind; and the incendiary case of Ossian Sweet, an African American man accused of murder while defending his Detroit home against a white mob.

In The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow, award-winning author Donald McRae re-creates these momentous courtroom battles with breathtaking vividness--and offers a compelling, intimate, and unforgettable portrait of a true American icon.

Review Quotes

"As the story unfolds, you catch yourself and remember it's nonfiction you're reading, not an intricate and intimate novel. Yet it's obvious that Donald McRae is not only a storyteller of great talent but also a scrupulous researcher. His rendering of Darrow as an attorney and as a man is astonishingly vivid, and these three trials will remain in the reader's memory for a long time." - James Tobin, author of Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
"A vivid re-creation of the three trials that capped the career of America's most famous attorney. . . . McRae takes us through each of the trials in novelistic detail and delivers an intimate portrait of the complicated Darrow. . . . McRae adds extra value with his behind-the-scenes portrait of Darrow, relying heavily on information drawn from the lawyer's longtime lover. . . . A persuasive, thoroughly winning brief." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"All three cases--tried in the space of just 24 months in 1924-26--held the nation spellbound and, what is more important, offered lessons with deep resonance then and even now. . . . Darrow, whose flights of rhetoric and courtroom magic established him in the pantheon of American defense lawyers, took these cases because he was interested in their potential to affect core legal and constitutional principles." - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
"Many books have been written about Clarence Darrow and his legal career. Donald McRae, in this engaging new narrative about Darrow in the 1920s, reveals how the lawyer's close relationship with Mary Field Parton significantly influenced his decisions in the courtroom. The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow rests on an abundance of research and is a welcome addition to the literature on the most celebrated lawyer in American history. - Simon Baatz, author of For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder that Shocked Chicago