The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow

“Wonderfully evocative… Donald McRae captures the Great Defender in all his complexity.... A joy to read.” — Kevin Boyle, National Book Award-winning author of Arc of Justice

"Astonishingly vivid." —James Tobin, Award-winning author of Ernie Pyle’s War

The story of the three dramatic trials that resurrected the life and career of America’s most colorful—and controversial—defense attorney: Clarence Darrow. Many books, plays, and movies have covered Darrow and the trials of Leopold and Loeb, John T. Scopes, and Ossian Sweet before: Geoffrey Cowan’s The People v. Clarence Darrow; Simon Baatz’s For the Thrill of It; Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice; Meyer Levin’s Compulsion and the film adaptation of the same name; Inherit the Wind; but few, if any, have achieved the intimacy and immediacy of Donald McRae’s The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow.

The courtroom has been a dramatic setting for larger-than-life figures throughout history, but few have attained the almost mythical status of Clarence Darrow. A legend in his own time, Variety called him "America's greatest one-man stage draw." Here was a man whose flair for showmanship went hand in hand with a fierce intellect; a man whose shaky moral compass and staggering conceit collided at all turns with an unrivaled eloquence and an overwhelming compassion for humanity.

Darrow had been one of the most revered lawyers in the country, but in 1924 his reputation was still clouded after a narrow escape from a charge of jury tampering in Los Angeles. At the age of sixty-seven he thought his life and career were almost over, until he was offered an impossible assignment—the defense of the teenage "thrill killers" Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Darrow then went on to earn even more international acclaim in two other groundbreaking cases: a classic standoff against William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, and the Ossian Sweet murder trial in Detroit. Throughout two crammed and dizzying years, this lion of the court held the Western world in awe as he tackled these three starkly different, history-making cases, each in turn dubbed "the Trial of the Century."

But these trials, as important as they were to Darrow, were not the only events that helped rejuvenate him and seal his courtroom legacy. There was also his enduring relationship with Mary Field Parton, his lover and soul mate, a woman whose role toward the end of his career was larger than many have realized. With fascinating new research and discoveries, including her private journals and letters, The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow is an intimate and riveting depiction of this American icon, one of the greatest lawyers this country has ever seen.

“As the story unfolds, you catch yourself and remember it’s nonfiction you’re reading, not an intricate and intimate novel. Yet it’s obvious that Donald McRae is not only a storyteller of great talent but also a scrupulous researcher. His rendering of Darrow as an attorney and as a man is astonishingly vivid, and these three trials will remain in the reader’s memory for a long time.” - James Tobin, author of Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

“A vivid re-creation of the three trials that capped the career of America’s most famous attorney. . . . McRae takes us through each of the trials in novelistic detail and delivers an intimate portrait of the complicated Darrow. . . . McRae adds extra value with his behind-the-scenes portrait of Darrow, relying heavily on information drawn from the lawyer’s longtime lover. . . . A persuasive, thoroughly winning brief.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“All three cases—tried in the space of just 24 months in 1924-26—held the nation spellbound and, what is more important, offered lessons with deep resonance then and even now. . . . Darrow, whose flights of rhetoric and courtroom magic established him in the pantheon of American defense lawyers, took these cases because he was interested in their potential to affect core legal and constitutional principles.” - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

“Many books have been written about Clarence Darrow and his legal career. Donald McRae, in this engaging new narrative about Darrow in the 1920s, reveals how the lawyer’s close relationship with Mary Field Parton significantly influenced his decisions in the courtroom. The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow rests on an abundance of research and is a welcome addition to the literature on the most celebrated lawyer in American history. - Simon Baatz, author of For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder that Shocked Chicago