Shapiro, Adam. Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Summary
Shapiro places the Scopes trial at a crucial moment in the history of biology textbook publishing, education reform in Tennessee, and progressive school reform across the country. He places the trial in this broad context—alongside American Protestant antievolution sentiment— to shed new light on the trial and the historical relationship of science and religion in America. He argues that the trial must be seen through this lens to challenge what Shapiro sees as a “self-justification” cycle between science and religion. “Science-religion conflict explains why there was a Scopes trial, and the Scopes trial proves the reality of science-religion conflict.” It also challenges the myth of inevitability, of a conflict between science and religion (evolution and Christianity). It was a particularly conjecture of circumstances that led to the trail: The nature of the textbook industry, biology curricula and education reform, and, especially in the case of Tennessee, the postponement of adopting new textbooks in 1925 (Tennessee) left A Civic Biology textbook in the hands of 9th and 10th graders.