Monday, October 18, 2010

Sage and scourge ...

... BOOK REVIEW: 'Mencken'. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

I have these volumes and found that after a while the vaunted style becomes tiresomely repetitive. Also, the review makes me wonder if the reviewer's acquaintance with the Scopes trial extends beyond Inherit the Wind. I have never been much of a fan of William Jennings Bryan, but he was possibly the only one of the principals in the trial who had actually read Darwin's One the Origin of Species, and Civic Biology, the textbook that Scopes used, certainly had some dubious features.

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