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.

This book brings together for the first time the fiery, touching, inspired words with which Clarence Darrow won miraculous acquittals for the doomed, the hated, the hopeless, the underdogs. Each appearance is prefaced by a full account of the case, the setting, and the emotional atmosphere in which the trial took place.

These moments of drama together with Darrow's memorable debates and addresses, bring to life an essentially American hero-a man whose passionate belief in justice for all became his lifework. The complete table of contents on the back of this jacket gives some idea of the diversity and fascination of these climactic cases in a great career but it cannot express the emotional and intellectual power of Darrow's timeless pleas. As Justice Douglas concludes:-

They had the power of deep conviction, the strength of any plea for fair play, the pull of every protest against grinding clown the faces of the poor, the appeal of humanity against forces of greed and exploitation.