Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned

By John A. Farrell

Drawing on untapped archives and full of fresh revelations, here is the definitive biography of America’s legendary defense attorney and progressive hero.

Clarence Darrow is the lawyer every law school student dreams of being: on the side of right, loved by many women, played by Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind. His days-long closing arguments delivered without notes won miraculous reprieves for men doomed to hang.
 
Darrow left a promising career as a railroad lawyer during the tumultuous Gilded Age in order to champion poor workers, blacks, and social and political outcasts against big business, Jim Crow, and corrupt officials. He became famous defending union leader Eugene Debs in the land­mark Pullman Strike case and went from one headline case to the next—until he was nearly crushed by an indictment for bribing a jury. He redeemed himself in Dayton, Tennessee, defending schoolteacher John Scopes in the “Monkey Trial,” cementing his place in history.
 
Now, John A. Farrell draws on previously unpublished correspondence and memoirs to offer a candid account of Darrow’s divorce, affairs, and disastrous finances; new details of his feud with his law partner, the famous poet Edgar Lee Masters; a shocking disclosure about one of his most controversial cases; and explosive revelations of shady tactics he used in his own trial for bribery.
 
Clarence Darrow is a sweeping, surprising portrait of a leg­endary legal mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9780385534512

John A. Farrell

John A. Farrell is the author of Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, and Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century, which was a New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Rave of the Year. As a longtime journalist at The Boston Globe, he worked as White House correspondent, Washington editor, and investigative reporter on the vaunted Spotlight team. His award-winning portrait of Nixon was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography, and earned him the title of American Historian Laureate from the New York Historical Society.

Reviews for Clarence Darrow

[bshultz1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book was very informative and took a very clear perspective on Darrow's actions. The author sought to portray Darrow not as a activist of modern times, but as a legal figure in history.

[dracodis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fantastic biography of the most famous lawyer in American history. Most people probably only know of Darrow through the Scopes Monkey Trial, but that was actually near the end of a most remarkable career. Farrell gives the reader a broader portrait of the man, talking not only about Darrow's crusade for the cause of American Labor, the focus of most of his career, but also goes into his political connections and personal life and philosophies and gives the reader a glimpse of not only the good that he accomplished, but his faults as well. Anyone who has wanted to know more about Clarence Darrow would be advised to read this book.