by John A. Farrell (Author)
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
The definitive biography of Clarence Darrow, the brilliant, idiosyncratic lawyer who defended John Scopes in the "Monkey Trial" and gave voice to the populist masses at the turn of the twentieth century, thus changing American law forever.
Amidst the tumult of the industrial age and the progressive era, Clarence Darrow became America's greatest defense attorney, successfully championing poor workers, blacks, and social and political outcasts, against big business, fundamentalist religion, Jim Crow, and the US government. His courtroom style--a mixture of passion, improvisation, charm, and tactical genius--won miraculous reprieves for men doomed to hang. In Farrell's hands, Darrow is a Byronic figure, a renegade whose commitment to liberty led him to heroic courtroom battles and legal trickery alike.
Author Biography
John Aloysius Farrell is the author of Richard Nixon: The Life, a biography of that most enigmatic 37th president of the United States.
His previous books are
Clarence Darrow: Attorney For The Damned, a biography of America's greatest defense attorney, and of
Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century, the definitive account of House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. and his times.
Farrell is an American journalist and author. He is a contributing editor to
Politico Magazine, after a prize-winning career as a newspaperman, most notably at
The Denver Post and
The Boston Globe, where he worked as White House correspondent and served on the vaunted
Spotlight team.
His biography of Clarence Darrow was awarded the
Los Angeles Times book prize for the best biography of 2011, and won critical praise from reviewers and fellow writers.
Number of Pages: 592
Dimensions: 1.21 x 8.02 x 5.17 IN
Publication Date: May 01, 2012
