situation that we're facing today, and if you were to say 50 or 100 years from now, how would you reflect on the mess we're in today? [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> well, you know, it's interesting. some of the reviewers of the crockett book have actually got p into contemporary issues and talked about him in reference to some of the folks that are involved in politics today. i mean, they used his name with people like sarah palin and folks like that, and i can understand that to a certain extent, but not really. ..

the whigs use crockett and teased about running him for president in some of them are very serious. i think crockett was more genuine than a lot of these so-called down-home candidates

we have today. and i will tell you this, he was a lot greater. [laughter] [applause] i think you would probably be astounded by the dumbing down of the country because he was always trying to improve himself. he really did. we found his copy. this guy has been portrayed as a bug in. there was something really very compelling about this man. that is what drew me to him. all of those qualities that i liked like so much in crockett, i find not an iota in the candidate that we have today.

not an iota. yeah. [laughter] but you have to understand that i'm a may bomb throwing vulture. [laughter] [applause] >> that was wonderful. >> i love. >> i love it. >> we loved every minute of it and i want to sing davy crockett. [laughter] i am sure he would be happy to sign your books. if you would like to form a line that way, you can come up, and we want to thank you so much for coming to this wonderful evening. >> could to be with you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. up next on booktv john farrell recounts the life and career of clarence darrow. the author examines the defense attorneys many noted cases which includes his representation of tennessee teacher jobs coax. mr. daryl's personal life was marked by bouts of depression and his legal career was almost ruined by an indictment for the bribing of a los angeles jury.

john farrell speaks at politics and prose bookstore here in washington d.c. for just under an hour. >> jack farrell gets underneath barrow and it is his second appearance at politics and prose. the first was for his marvelous biography of tip o'neill. anti-god underneath tip to matt. oatmeal is sorely missed today as his clarence darrow. jack you are an example or author for white politics and prose is about so we are really happy to have you here. i wanted to do this introduction very much because i was a great admirer of your book on o'neal. and i can tell you from having read jack farrell's look on

clarence darrow, it is another book worth reading that helps us understand part of our legacy in america and a very turbulent and special time. you know, we think of darrow often defined by the movies. there is spencer tracy and we all know about the scopes trial and there is or some wells as darrow in compulsion. and we all know about leopold and lowe. but would you have done in both the combination of your journalism and the kind of current work you are doing at the center for public integrity it helps to serve as a perceptive and artful biographer.

darrow's principles and passions at times caused him to compromise and violate principles that he believed in. and you captured that with some empathy and psychological understanding of human failings. when you go through the book and

[applause] >> it is really nice to be introduced by david, who actually gave me great insight for the tip o'neill book. he was a wonderful help. i came early tonight so i could listen in and make sure that the bookstore was passing it to

great hands and i was assured by meeting them and talking to them. you really are a wonderful community of people and i think a great thing about politics and prose is we can continue to belong here and we can continue to show up and continued to pay extra for books than i put on amazon. but do you know what? you can't beat david on amazon. you can't come out on a night like tonight and beat amazon. we need great independent bookstores and i'm very proud as i said with tip o'neill which was 10 years ago, to be reading it at politics and prose. 100 years ago this fall claire and darrow stood on a downtown los angeles sidewalk and watch the police cdc's chief investigator caught in the act of bribing a juror. a few weeks later darrow was indicted on two counts of bribery. the investigator agreed to testify in return for favored

treatment and immunity from the state. he swore that darrow and ordered him to pay $4000 to jurors who agreed to vote not guilty. darrow was at the height of his fame one of america's foremost trial lawyers, political leaders and populace champions when his career careened off track in southern california. staggered by his shame, he left his wife one rainy night. he had a revolver in one pocket and a whiskey bottle in the other. he sat down at a table underneath the hanging unshaded lightbulb and he vowed about to kill himself. going to indictment he said i can't stand ashamed. fortunately for us, she talked him out of it. darrow went on and created an american archetype, the advocate for the common folk. looking his thumbs in his best or his suspenders, regarding the jury beneath that cascading shock of hair, speaking with plain but emotional conviction

of the nobility of man, the cruelty of mankind and the threat to liberty posed by narrowminded men of wealth and their legal guns for hire. and his words continue to resonate today. this is one of my favorite darrow quotes. tell me that doesn't remind you of a certain era that we are living in now. [laughter] with the land and possessions of america rapidly passing into the hands of the favored few, with thousands of men and women in idleness and want, with wages constantly tending to a lower level, with the knowledge that the servants of the people elected to correct abuses are bought and sold at legislative halls and the bidding of corporations and individuals, with all these notorious evil sapping the foundation of popular government and destroying personal liberty a rude awakening must, and and and at the show, he would warn, when you look abroad over the ruin

and desolation remember the long years in which the storm was rising and don't lame the thunder. it was quite a show. in the days before radio and motion pictures the legal clashes play the role of mass entertainment or. it was unusual for courtrooms to be packed with lawyers off-duty judges newspaperman politicians the local bishop in the hallways outside jamba spectators trying to get into see darrow close with a defense. at times a mob of thousands of spill through the corridors down the stairs and out into the yard to surround the courthouse and raise ladders so they could listen up the windows. in lectures and public speaking darrow affected a humble awkwardness. in court simplicity to endear him to his audience. he might start with his arms folded, tapping his gold spectacles on his shoulder, his brow contracted and thought. often he would lean on the rail

is it to take the chores into confidence and he would. >> very very low wait until the jurors in the backroom would have to lean forward because they didn't want to miss what he was saying. all of a sudden he would shout and point of the prosecutor. he would accuse him of all sorts of the evil wrongdoing. his voice would turn harsh and his jaw muscles with tight end he would swing his arms and then the storm would pass in the son would return. darrow would be gina, engaging and lightening the mood with a wisecrack. he was a very witty man. man. he never addressed juries he said. he talked to them. his appeal to jurors were all about context for the judges and prosecutors of victorian american who knew what they were therefore. they were there to exact vengeance and to safeguard property and propriety. but someone believe the jurors and in this is revolutionary had given the opportunity and is skillful enough limitation could be persuaded to look past the legal particulars to judge a

defendant in the context of the times and situational factors of prompt behavior, background. he sought to make even the most hideous of crimes he represented some hideous defendants. comprehensible. he would stand, slouches shoulders, talk quietly and hardly mention the facts of the case at all. with the great illustration you talk like human beings and the difficulties of life, the futility of human plans, the misfortunes of the defendant and the strange workings of fate and chance that landed him in this courtroom in the struggle. he would try to make the jury understand not so much the case as the defendant. it was not unusual in the late 19th and early 20th century for lawyers to take many hours spread over two or three days to give a closing argument in a statement in case. in the leopold and lowe case in chicago in 1995 darrow spoke for three days. without notes. a marvelous to play it and select and concentration and

focus. it was more than just a tactic. it was his creed. he was a determinist. he didn't believe in fear -- free wilna or good or evil or free choice. there were no moral absolutes, no truth, no justice. there was only mercy. we are all poor blind creatures he said bound hand and foot and invisible chains of heredity and environment doing pretty much what we have to do in a barbarous and cruel world and that is about all there is. he had no faith in god or churches and notoriety in the jazz age is the condor's most prominent and outspoken atheist. he built an entire moral code around life's pointlessness and the comfort intolerance human beings can offer to their doomed fellow travelers. he was a practicing defense attorney, trial lawyer and in his time he represented gangsters, psychopaths, gamblers, bank robbers, drunk drivers, rum runners, journalists, crooked politicians and greedy corporations and many

a scorned woman like emma simpson the socialite who smuggled handgun into court, shot her philandering husband in the midst of a divorce proceedings. you have killed him said a clerk. i hope so, said emma. [laughter] darrow could not resist that case. the wisecrack. she was no doubt guilty of contempt of court he told the jury. but, meaning the classic definition of chutzpah, darrow convinced the jury to have mercy on the widow and he got her off. [laughter] they just could not convict a woman in chicago for cheating a cheating allows. it is not for nothing that the lawyer billy flynn in the broadway musical and movie chicago is patterned in part on clarence darrow. elmer had it coming. give him the old razzle-dazzle indeed. darrow was an notorious rick who are fed sensualist who took

pleasure from the chase seduction and the act of love and to use sex as well as a narcotic. he relied on physical nearness to escape the emptiness and the spiritual isolation of his life said his friend and lover mary parton, the gelda talked him out of killing himself. for he was often lonely haunted by death and prayed to melancholy. folder was the only feeling in the world that can make you forget for a while. and work was in -- for darrow as well. even though i surf farc for freedom i had a consciousness i was doing it to keep myself occupied so i might forget. every man has his dope said darrow whether it was religion, philosophy, creeds, whiskey, cocaine, morphine anything to take away reality. he was a byronic europe, intelligent captivating, jaded, moody, renegade with little regard for rancor society. he scorned society and its norms and would deploy any trick to save a client.

to him the world was equally immoral, love is below set up her gross -- progressive era reformer. in the course of a 60 year career he would tailor testimony and be tried twice for jury writing a narrow escape prison. do not the rich and the powerful bribed juries intimidate and coerce judges as well as juries? do they shrink for many weapon he would ask. and yet he had an ineffable compassion for those who face loss or despair or persecution. case strongly emotional nature was goaded by his upbringing. his father was a book loving owner for ware furniture shop and abolitionist, free thinker who states his family the values of liberty and equality and taught his son to suspect and challenge authority. and compassion play the role of the unifying theory in darrow's chaotic universe.

his office was invariably filled one man said by men in overalls bear arms in slings, by women huddled in shawls and threadbare clothes yuan face waiting for darrow. the less charitable described them as the fortune -- fortunetellers par including halfwits who even god could not teach anything. but darrow would emerge at the end of the day to see the long line, sigh and offer an understanding smile. sunday dinner would grow cold as he sat for an hour or more patiently hearing the facts of the case and offering advice on the poor man's trouble and depending on how he was fixed at the time a third or more of his cases through to nothing. he was never a wealthy man. he spent much of his money on wine, women and song and the rest he wasted. [laughter] the publisher e.w. scripps said everything about darrow suggests a cynic. everything but one thing and that is an entire lack of real

cynicism. he was thomas jefferson's air, the foremost champion of personal liberty and this time. when he was a boy i darrow like to say the hired man had dignity. he would dine with the family of the employer. he shared their pew on sunday and he would court the bosses daughter. there were new banks, no stores and very little money. nobody had a monopoly of riches or poverty. the community was truly democratic but the nation's founding principles were stretched beyond recognition in their warped the industrial age. a shrewd and lucky few made great fortunes. carnegie and steel, morgan and finance rockefeller in oil and it it should be to their success to god, hard work and plucky and they find it in the writings of herbert spencer the comfort of an assurance that the poor deserve their life. is natures way of furthering the race by weeding out the week. the order the managers to lower costs and when workers organize unions private armies and local militias were summoned to break up the strikes and

demonstrations often with volleys of rifle fire. corning to the courts the workers only right was to negotiate man-to-man with an employer and to take himself elsewhere to the terms not to his liking and nobody married the bosses daughter. atop a social order the robber barons wanted their aristocratic aspirations and dressed up like 18th century european royalty and spectacular parties. they hung them in diamond colors on their dogs. historian c. van woodward wrote they were uninhibited fully flamboyant in their misconduct. drooling tobacco juice and eating and drinking incredible amounts. they sometimes seem devoid of shame in manners and morals and ethics of lightning. and of course, he professed independent men squeeze huge subsidies from the federal government. the railroads alone got $350,000,000.243000 square miles of land and they control the

legal establishment to the supreme court where the justices were diligently finding that bill of rights is a guarantee property above all else. as a supreme court justice david brewer at the time said, from the time in early his records when he took loving possession of even the forbidden apple the idea of property and sacredness of the right of its possession is never departed. the love of acquirements mingled with the joy of possession is the real stimulus to human activity. the jurors who resisted brandeis, homes and darrow would be honored by history as grapes dissenters and mediocrity would be forgotten but that was little consolation to the working men and women of the time. by his 40th birthday in 1997 the great economic bell, the frontier was gone and in its absence heightened the sharp contrast between the traditional idea of america is the land of opportunity, the land of the self-made man, free from class

distinction and existing america, so unlike the ideal. at the time of his trial for bribery darrow was america's top labor lawyer. he was in los angeles that year to defend james and john mcnamara, to union terrace two conspired to bomb los angeles times in 1910 killing 20 innocent printers and newspapermen in the explosion and the subsequent inferno. darrow one notable victories defending america's labors and woodworkers and colin hard rock miners. he faced down the robber barons and a gunman and seen how they grew up -- macroto juries and judges and he has no illusions in the fall of 1911 in los angeles. bribing a jury to save a man's life is mr. schroeder in her diary, he would not hesitate. he survived and emerge a better man and a finer lawyer. he had been on the ropes said his friend frances wilson and he knew what it was to suffer. the cynic is humbled throat the

journalist lincoln steffens, the man that last sees. he faces pleased please misunderstand and he won a not guilty verdict in his first trial and a hung jury in the next. from the ashes of that ordeal darrow boards the grandest of america's legal careers as the champion of personal liberty and defender of the underdog and he became said lincoln steffens the attorney for the. he had no choice. broken disgrace to return to chicago and he took the cases that others would not touch. there was isaac on the black man accused of the rape and murder of of young whiteners in common is an anarchist snared in a reactionary further of world war i and the red scare. rank lloyd wright in the cause of sexual freedom and the architect was pursued by federal prosecutors for violating the man act, which made it a crime for unmarried couples to cross-state lines. today we recall darrow's plea against the death penalty for

the lives of nathan leopold and richard lowe the killers who ordered a chicago boy to demonstrate their intellectual superiority by committing the perfect crime. it was wasn't especially despicable killing but darrow's call for mercy save their necks and of course remember darrow for the scopes monkey trial. in tennessee a year later when he fought for academic and scientific read them battle for those who would reject religion and ban the teaching of evolution that public schools. stymied by a apostle judged a hostile apostle judged darrell called the lead prosecutor three-time presidential candidate williams jennings bryant to the stand and of course their fabled class was immortalized in inherit the wind. when the monkey trial was over however darrow was the most famous lawyer in the world. he was 68, short on money and yearning for retirement and about health. he could've commanded huge bees on wall street are represented rich divorcees in chicago and instead and i think this really indicates is true glory he took the case of ossian suite and

african-american position and moved into a white neighborhood in detroit. baby have seen the pictures. was a summer the klan march down pennsylvania avenue with their hoods and their cloaks. thousands of them and in detroit at mab -- mob gathered breaking the windows and threatening its inhabitants. sweet's family and friends of move up up and in they fired into the crowd killing one man and injuring another on a september night in 1925. darrow went to detroit and a token fee raise by the naacp. he won the case and was staggered by heart attack in the summer of 1926. the great theme of darrow's life a lot more he thought has marched their courtrooms in cases was the defense of individual liberty from the unrelenting, crushing impersonal forces of modernity. no air of the world had ever

witnessed such a rapid concentration of wealth and power darrow warned and history furnishes abundant lessons of the inevitable result. all the greatness of america marvelous wealth and all her wonders are monument to the wisdom of liberty but our liberty produced prosperity in this prosperity looks with doubting eye upon the mother that gave it breath and threatens to strangle her to death. america in darrow's time needed a new sustainment. in the embrace and the defense in support of lights underdogs darrow helped create one. he gave it a narrative voice and he kept his supplied with sympathetic characters and he forged his own place in american folklore. if the underdog on top you'd probably be just as rotten as the upper dog darrow like to say but in the meantime i am for him. he needs friends more than the other fellow. americans of his era drew strange watching darrow rage against the machine and they can again today. there something grand and epic

in his fierce resistance to those oppressive forces which inspired the rebels of his ancestry the abolitionists of his boyhood imperil freedom in his lifetime and pose a threat to liberty today. the marks of battle are all over his face for the journalist henry mencken after watching darrow at the monkey trial. has been through more wars than a whole regiment of pershing's and most of them have been struggled to the death without quarter. as he always wanted lincoln asked. actually, no. ryzhkov seems lost among us. imbecility lives on. a wrote mencken but they are not as safe as they used to be. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you so much for lifting us as well and again i want to thanks c-span for being here. we are going to begin the

question our. one of the things that stands out, so please come to the microphone with any questions that you may have, is that in our history then and you were talking about the conflicts of labor and all of that, and as we know, there was often the visions created along racial lines by the powerful interest and one of the things that darrow did was he did his service as a citizen not only with the cases he took but he was willing to go to the meetings and serve on the board of the naacp and that is also part of that sense of service that he had that may have come from the jeans genes of this abolitionists father. but, whether he believed

determinism or not, he made that choice and it was a terrific choice. please begin with the questions and if you are comfortable, tell us your name. >> my name is dr. caroline coghlan. i'm a physician but i used to be a lawyer and darrow inspire generations and generations of lawyers. that was a wonderful talk and i'm sure the book is wonderful too. you said that darrow threw himself into his work in the wine, women and song to escape from something. was he depressed? >> he had a lack of faith in an afterlife, spiritual life. he had been brought up by freethinkers which is what people of the time were called. they were agnostics or atheists. he had a great fear of death because interestingly his father who was a cabinet maker and a small ohio town also became the town undertaker. [laughter] because he worked with would so wood so he made the coffins. so darrow worked in the wood shop with his dad and up against

the wall were a bunch of coffins. he had to clean the chicken soft a hearse when somebody midtown died. and his mother died when he was 15. darrow interestingly enough says in his autobiography that his mother died when he was a very young child. i don't call 15 very young and his brothers and sisters at the time described darrow is a man doing a man's job in the wood shop. so, one thing i think that scared all the children in the family but especially clarence was that his mom was dying, she told them because again she was a free thinker as well, it is all a dream and someday some day the aleutian will pass for you just as it is passing for me. so we didn't have a faith in the afterlife. he was very realistic about the inhumanity of man to man. so it was basic to his compassion that got him day by day life. he was from of oppression. i didn't try to make an analysis of the book.

it was interesting at one point in his life he was very sick and he said injections of narcotics for nine months, and that made us wonder whether or not when he you talk about dopey wasn't just being -- he was being specific about something that affected him but again there was no proof about that and i didn't want to leave you on as a reader that i knew more than i did. >> thank you. >> sure. >> good evening. an excellent talk. my name is neal newman. i had a phonecall this evening from a good friend of mine who had just finished her book. he was in maine and an excellent trial counsel and he raised that he liked her book very very much. in fact, just purchased it. but he raised i think somewhat of a monday and that i think practical question. how was it that after these number of years to books have just come out on darrow. and if i also may follow it up, how do you feel about how

pushing your book at the same time as another book on the same subject. >> honestly i would rather have a field to myself. sharing a review is not as good as getting a good review. the reason is interesting though. about 10 years ago there was a man named randy teach in minnesota and he is a darrow autograph letter collector and he went to darrow's granddaughter before she passed away and said, do you have anything from your grandfather? she said, don't know. let's go down the baseman look. they rummage around the basement and they found a box that said christmas ornaments. sure enough inside this box for the thousand letters to and from darrow that he had not given to the library of congress or stoned to read the first biography in 1941. and so these letters eventually made their way to the university of minnesota in minnesota open than two scholars last summer. so that was i think the reason that the two was wrote the books at the same time. the other book is very different

from mine. it is 300 pages and much more analytic. is written by an academic rather than a journalist. minus more of a narrative. i have three chapters on the trials in idaho in the chapter on leopold in lowe in a chapter on the scopes monkey trial and he he sort of merges them altogether into his analysis of darrow's elites. i think the "wall street journal" reputed and said it is a matter of taste of what you like. do you want a more analytic book or a gripping narrative? [laughter] anyway, with that. >> i will pass those comments on and catch it on c-span but i concur with you. >> thank you. >> hi, my name is tired now is come and live as i had known

that but what i wanted to as was is a stone of the is as good as a the is a good is if the figures the end arrow sometime is a great biographical novelist, and a great novelist the rutherford, one of the things i try to do in my book respectfully point out and get the handicap -- note, no. the other thing that the bonehead was he was working with operation of the darrow family and so whenever you try to get

into the mistresses or was he really ill to writing a jury in los angeles, the family would push back said his hands were tied at those times were different then. you just didn't go into the detail of the persons life the way that today's biographers battles, the reason that i did a book about clarence darrow is when i was 12 years old somebody gave me a copy of irving stone's clarence darrow. the because it impressed me so much that i printed my name and the date date inside and i've carried it with me for longer years than i care to talk about. it is a marvelous book and i would recommend it if you just want beautiful poetry and only the warm, witty side of darrow. darrow's autobiographies of different book entirely for all you also wrote two novels.

he is very skilled thing from his beaches, is guilt writer as well. the autobiography is worth reading. it is more, it is called clarence darrow the story of my life but it is really more clarence darrow my philosophy. does not give you any feel for the great cases. he doesn't give you any details or revelations and he does talk at length about where we fit on the planet and how basically all we are our lost sailors on a raft in a tossing seen the best thing we can do is reach out and give each other comfort. if you really want to get a sense it is really the place to go. >> thank you. be sure. >> who i am as somebody who is not willing to reveal how long i have been a big fan of clarence darrow. my question however is no, are there people today who are

clarence darrow like who were exemplary so this man? who is in his world? >> yeah, actually there somebody here tonight. i don't know if he is around or gopaul, are you here? don't raise your hand if you are too were to embarrass. i think the defense bar takes capital cases in this country are as gutsy, brave and noble as clarence darrow. [applause] i did a series of stories when i was a porter for the "boston globe" and i got to meet some of them. they work for no money in hopeless cases. society turns against them. we in this room as much as we may love to read about clarence darrow really don't care about their work at the nerve of these individuals being executed in yet knowing they are going to lose time after time in texas and alibi and indiana and kenya, they go out and they fight this good light and do the best they can. as far as nobility, sure.

i think that is one reason we don't have a famous great attorney like clarence darrow any more. you tend to get wealthy and as a trial lawyer when you win your first big case and may be darrow would have ended up this way to med that you don't end up representing the attorney for the damned. he had to come back and it led him to take a series of great cases in his 50s and 60s that we all remember him by. i think that success boils great lawyers. >> my name is matt harrington. i checked and the innocence program is probably the best example of that high standard. is just going to say that like you i'm a lawyer and i come to the bar that to family members gave me. one was irving stone's book and

one was -- a very much styled himself as darrow's successor. and dealing with darrow though as a lawyer, there is this aching desire i have always had since i read the stone book to find some place where he feels bad about writing those jurors. [laughter] i am wondering if anywhere and that christmas ornament box he found even a hint of that? >> we found just the opposite. i found in those records and other small cache of letters to the didn't make the library of congress and ended up at boston university because they were thought to be too sensitive that the time that the papers made their way to library congress. he wrote a telegram at the time he was indicted to his brother in his head cannot myself feel guilty. it is a great argument before the supreme court on the case of eugene debs the american roadway worker union leader. darrow said 100,000 men, 300,000

american men walked off the job across the country. i don't care what the law says. i don't care what the legislators in illinois and the legislators in congress say. that cannot be against the law if 300,000 americans decide that it is wrong, that their life has to be resisted by this kind of a walkout. so that basically was his philosophy which was that the fumblings of men in the legislature writing down laws were really things that could be dashed away, brushed away in case of the greater morality and the motive of course was everything. if a defendant was caught red-handed with a gun in his hand but had a great motive, then darrow could find a way to justify that and almost all crimes he looked at in that manner. so yeah you read it and you get there and you say, wow that is pretty extreme but you know it is good for our society that we

have extremist like that i think. >> there is a broad dark line between that case in bribing the jury. >> there is, that's right. >> good evening. my name is noaa and thank you for the wonderful talk. i wanted to touch on your expertise as a journalist in your experience at the center and ask you to comment on darrow's relationship with the leading journalists of that era a man named walter lippman so i'm probably -- knew very well. it describes a different view than the one you describe. kenya quote random from his work -- who should set aside democratic dogmatism's that men are the best judge of their own interest and instead you know realize it is up to men of letters and air additions do you know, to decide what the best

interests of men are. i'm wondering if you can could engage with that expression of lippman's you. lippmann is a broad guy like there'll but that particular strength in liberal democratic bots in the 1920s and see how darrow would respond to your impression. >> i don't think he was an intimate of lippman. i do know the time of the scopes trial there were area died intellectual liberals in new york who thought the darrow was absolutely the worst person to be handling this case. darrow had been a founding attorney for the aclu and the naacp which by itself you think would deserve a biography. but he was never what he would think of as a classical lyrical liberal. he broke with woodrow wilson. he broke with the tiara for the new deal. he was more of a libertarian and many people will say that once you got into the 20th century whose time had passed and he was

living this 19th century liberal and the 20th century. so for that reason and others, they didn't want someone to be the champion on something like evolution. i think that lippman probably would have felt the same way. darrow was a very common man. there are letters in which people talk about the fact that he had dirty fingernails and egg on his ties and the always look like he is slept in a suit. i just don't see that dorta fitting in well with the kind of intellectual liberals that lippman represented. >> thank you. >> sure. >> do you have one? >> i have one. jack can repeat it. i seem to be the very odd man

out in this gathering. my history is, i came to birth in an era and a time where, if you didn't have a ph.d. in science, you were doomed to be a lowbrow and a ne'er-do-well. so, notwithstanding the fact that i liked like to literature and so one, my dear parents

coached me into a science career, costing me five bucks a year, courtesy of the city college of new york. so, my impression of clarence darrow is almost entirely different then the collective impressions here. i thought of him as sort of a bad guy, who was the tool he of the richer classes. he was the one that put down

scopes, who was the one who had proof on his side. so, the scopes trial in my early thinking should have been reversed. >> do you want me to talk a little bit about scopes? >> his trial? well, i would just add one thing. if i were the lawyer for the prosecution to the scopes trial, i would say -- there are so many contradictions in the theory of evolution that it should be

immediately thrown out of court's because the sciences job. [laughter] >> okay. >> just an example. >> yeah. >> the trilobites existed or some billions of years as far as we know if, and the dinosaurs were out of business in 75 million years. [laughter] how does somebody, who believes he in regular evolution explained that? >> well, it was a much clearer battle in 1925. america had just come back from

world war i. the world have been shaken by the savage nature of world war i, and there was a fundamentalist revival in america and people like williams jennings brian who was the prosecutor in the case, interpreted darwinism as a cause for prussian militarism. so there were many good reasons to fear this way that the new science was changing and you also had einstein and you had mark zandi led freud. everything was mixed up. you had women cutting their hair and wearing short skirts. so the 1920s were a very rambunctious time and on the mentalism reacted with the idea that what we are going to do is ban the teaching of evolution in the classroom. they never really got down to debating the science and in fact, in dayton tennessee where the trial took place the judge

refused to let darrow put any of the scientific experts on the stand. and that is why to salvage his case, heap called williams william jennings bryan to the stand as an expert on the bible. the judge was afraid the war was going to collapse on the second story program. you can still go there to see a frequent if they still a child in that courtroom. so they all went outside to five and it was built under the maple trees in the courtyard and that is where would all the single rate is confrontation, legal confrontation in american history to lace with darrow questioning brian about -- very little about science. much more in did jonah really stay three days in a well? he asked questions to embarrass william jennings bryan and when he did ask brian questions about

science, he was so uneducated in science he hadn't take the trouble to look into it, that he could not answer those questions so to an educated audience and this was the first trial that was carried a radio as the country, to an educated audience they saw brian didn't know what he was thinking about. the short answer to your question is that there really was not a great debate about science of evolution. it was much more debate about the bible and about science in the classroom. >> okay, thank you. >> just one quick question. is fascinated to senior story. rogers. he never became -- is forgot today and he is an odd eccentric rickover to speak a little bit about that? >> stefan and earl rogers were the two guys are discovered in the research of this book. rural rogers if you can believe it was more cynical than clarence darrow. he was also an alcoholic.

but he greater trial lawyer even then darrow and that rogers to cases and got the guys found innocent. darrow was good at taking hopeless cases as the attorney for the damned and saving them from the hangman or the electric chair. but he never had the record of not guilty verdicts that rule rogers did and southern california. and it was an indication of his desperation because rogers was with the powers that be in los angeles. he was antiunion. it is an indication of darrow's. the defense of clarence darrow in the bribery trial is amazing. i went out and i read the 10,000 page transcript in los angeles. interestingly enough the law libraries across the street from "the los angeles times" was bonn. rogers idea was that he was just going to raise so many red

herrings. he was going to send up so many skyrockets. he was going to cause amazing circus in the courtroom and by the time the prosecution presenting their case, the jurors would have no idea what it was all about. [laughter] and that is basically what happened. the prosecutor played into his hands and tried to bring in tangential matters and rogers would jump up and shout and take them all off on a cause somewhere. at one point they were trying to get a witness who was being a very good witness and looking directly at the jury and speaking directly at the jury and they wanted to distract him. and so, rogers would walk around the courtroom to try to get the guys i is a ways from the jury. he was very disappointed he kept looking. rogers would sit down next to the press box and as he was asking questions he would be reading the copy that the reporters were writing and he would reach over and do some editing and that he would stand up and asked these questions. in this case, the witness would

not budge so rogers went over to darrow and said you stand up and walk around too and we will see if the two of us can get it. at that point the prosecutor lost it and set stood up and said your honor, rogers and darrow are trying to hypnotize the witness. the idea that come in the middle of this courtroom in the middle of los angeles, they were some sort of swamis trying to pull some magic lead led into a huge uproar. two days later the prosecutor was still seething. he got into another fight and he tried to throw it glass ashtray at rogers across the room. rogers ran over to him and grabbed him and he suffered a small cut on his wrist and said, embraced martyrdom and said your runner i don't deserve this. [laughter] it was just one big circus after another in the prosecution knew what was happening and could not do anything to stop it. in the second trial unfortunately rogers was not a

public and didn't show up. [laughter] that trial there was a hung jury 8-4 and a jurors believed someone was guilty. speaking of other books there is a wonderful book called the people versus clarence darrow. it was written 10 years ago. if you loved rogers, that is the book to read. >> are you sure that rogers was sent the model for chicago? >> i was simplifying a little bit. billy flynn, the galba broke the original play of chicago was a reporter for a think it was the tribune or maybe the times and she based it on -- there were a number of these sob sister stories like in the movie. he deserved a. >> my real question was, i remember reading about lieberman's book, and in part of it he talks about defending the scottsboro boys. i have some memory from that, something about darrow being

approached first in not taking the case and i wondered if you had any thoughts about that and about why? >> this happened a few years after the trial and the naacp fellows were feeling a little cocky. in the first reports came in from alabama they didn't embrace the case and they made a severe case. they held that. they thought that perhaps a rape had occurred. they thought the defendants were all ignorant farm boys showing their new york sophistication, and they did not call clarence darrow, but the attorneys from the communist party called terrence darrow and said would you defend the scottsboro boys? arrow said, well you know i'm the founder of the naacp and i have to check. so we talked to the naacp and the naacp of course a well if clarence darrow has to go down there and defend the skies he is to do it for us. for six months and one of the sorriest cases in naacp history,

they struggled with the communist party of america to try to get an edge and public opinion, tried to convince these four defendants that you know if you went with us you would get darrow and if you don't you won't. and darrow went down there and this all happened in the summer. he went down there from in december and met with the defendants and he met with the communist labour party. he said look, we can defend them jointly. i can defend them as individuals. the only thing i want to is i have to have the assurance that i'm going to be able to design the defense. and so if what you are asking me is to, and he said i will leave the defendant for you but if what you are asking from me if you are going to defend i cannot do it. i cannot put these boys lives at stake for whatever martyrdom you

have planned for them because that is better for your political party. and so he ended up walking away from the case as a whole. they ended up going with the communist labour party and for better or for worse, that lawyer that they god was a fantastic guy. >> my recollection is that lieberman actually was able to get an agreement. he said no interference from. >> may be for the first row but as time went on he was incredibly frustrated also by their and transitions. that was his excuse. he got an awful lot of flak from his liberal community in america which thought that he had turned on his heel and walked out on the defendants. >> thank you. >> sure. >> thank you, jack. >> my pleasure. [applause] >> for more information visit the author's web site, ja farrell.com.

>> july was a busy month at publishing news. what with the liquidation of porters and now there has been an update with the google book settlement. darrow is the news editor of publishers marketplace. sarah weinman what is the latest on the google book settlement? >> well there was a hearing that took place on july 19, where judge jennie chen heard from various parties with respect to the settlement and from what a news account reported he wasn't terribly happy at the current state of things. the bottom line is that both parties want more time and even though judge chen granted an extension the next hearing will be in september, he is really pushing for something to happen. and if the two opposing parties, google and the authors guild and the association of american publishers working in tandem, if he can't seem to come to some sort of agreement, then judge