language Bryan had been honing during his lecture tours. Kazin describes the histrionics with which Bryan delivered his famous peroration. He raised his fingers to his temples as he spoke the words: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Bryan then extended his arms straight out from his body and held the Christlike pose for several seconds. The stunned audience exploded in a wild demonstration that projected Bryan into the presidential nomination the next day.

The Republican nominee, William McKinley, observed the long tradition that one did not seek the presidency; the people offered it to a deserving leader. He ran a “front porch campaign,” remaining home in Canton, Ohio, as delegations from across the country arrived to pledge support. McKinley’s campaign manager, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, meanwhile marshaled the enormous financial resources of the Republicans, flooding the United States with endless speakers, tons of buttons and gewgaws, and more than 120 million pamphlets denouncing Bryan and silver.

Bryan countered by flouting precedent and actively campaigning. Taking his cause directly to the people, he crisscrossed the country by rail, traveling some eighteen thousand miles, delivering more than six hundred speeches. Even newspapers strongly opposed to Bryan felt compelled to cover his innovative campaign, allowing him to reach millions of citizens beyond what his monetary resources permitted. The election aroused enormous interest: Over 79 percent of eligible voters participated, a record not since equaled. McKinley received 7.1 million votes to Bryan’s 6.5 million, carrying states with 271 electoral votes to Bryan’s 176.

Biographers of Bryan face a severe structural dilemma. The year 1896 is the dramatic highpoint of Bryan’s lifethe following twenty-nine years were all downhill, as Bryan suffered two more electoral defeats, served an unsatisfactory term as secretary of state, and concluded with the farce of the Scopes trial. Kazin’s chapter on 1896 ends on page 79; he conscientiously continues on for nine more chapters and 227 pages of text that necessarily lack the drama and interest of the preceding three chapters.

The issues involved justify Kazin’s detailed narrative, even if his evaluation of Bryan is not always convincing. The 1900 election, which Bryan lost to McKinley by an even larger margin, debated American imperialism and whether the United States should undertake to rule an empire in Asia. Kazin, clearly aware of present-day concerns, presents Bryan as a principled anti-imperialist. However, Bryan supported declaring war on Spain, accepted a commission as colonel of a Nebraska volunteer regiment, and railed against the War Department for stranding his regiment in disease-ridden Florida. Kazin unconvincingly tries to absolve Bryan of any responsibility for retention of the Philippines, even though he urged Democratic senators to ratify the annexation treaty, which passed by only two votes.

In 1908 Bryan received the Democratic nomination for president a third time and ran on a platform proposing many progressive ideas that Kazin correctly notes exceeded the reforms Woodrow Wilson later enacted and anticipated some New Deal approaches. Bryan advocated regulation of corporations, tariff reform, a federal income tax, insurance of bank deposits, national control of the money supply, direct election of senators, and he fully supported the program of the American Federation of Labor, which for the first time endorsed a candidate for president. However, Bryan lost once again.

When Wilson asked him to become secretary of state in 1912, Bryan insisted on two conditions. He would not serve alcohol at official functionsa practice ridiculed by the Washington diplomatic corps. He would concentrate on negotiating treaties in which nations agreed that in the event of an international dispute they would avoid war by observing a “cooling off” period during which they would discuss compromise. Thirty nations solemnly signed the treaties in 1913, but when a serious dispute erupted in 1914, no one paid attention to Bryan’s “cooling-off” period. Despite his anti-imperialist rhetoric, Bryan supported Wilson’s armed intervention in Mexico and the Caribbean region.

Bryan wished to maintain strict American neutrality during World War I and objected to the pro-British bias of Wilson and his cabinet. The differences came to a head over how to respond to the deaths of American citizens when a German submarine sank the Lusitania, a British passenger liner. Bryan desired a calm response and resigned over the issue. Kazin concedes, however, that he blurred the impact of his action by signing Wilson’s first stern protest note before refusing to consent to a follow-up complaint, but then sent Wilson a cordial letter of resignation. He campaigned for Wilson’s reelection in 1916. When Congress declared war, Bryan supported the decision and again tried to enlist.

Out of office, Bryan returned to the lecture circuit, focusing more and more on religious themes. His reform advocacy now centered on prohibitionBryan’s personal intervention with the Nebraska legislature in 1920 is credited with securing that state’s ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. At the urging of his wife, he supported women’s right to vote. In the 1920’s Bryan became the chief spokesman for those who wanted to ban teaching of Darwinian evolution in publicly supported institutions.

Because Bryan used appeals to the Bible and to Christianity to support his demands for economic reform, Kazin equates his ideas with those of ministers who joined the Social Gospel movement. However, most Social Gospel ministers embraced a postmillennial theology, arguing their reform efforts would hasten the second coming of Christ. In contrast, the growing Fundamentalist movement embraced a premillennial approach, preaching that only the actual return of Christ could bring about significant change. Bryan showed no interest in theological debates; if anything, he had more in common with Fundamentalists who agreed with his denunciation of Darwin than liberal ministers willing to consider reconciling their religious beliefs with evolution.

Kazin praises those who argue that Bryan’s basic objection was not to evolution per se but rather to Social Darwinist theories that justified endless wars of conquest and supported eugenicists who would bar the poor and feebleminded from having babies. However, Kazin’s own evidence does not sustain this interpretation. Bryan does not cite Social Darwinism or eugenics as a reason to oppose evolution in the extensive testimony and speeches he gave at the Scopes trial. Teaching evolution was objectionable, Bryan argued, because it shook the faith of children and youth in the literal truth of the Bible and Christianity; therefore the state had the right and the duty to protect its young by prohibiting teaching Darwinism.

Kazin consistently condemns Bryan for supporting denial of equal rights to African Americans. Growing up in the racist environment of southern Illinois in the nineteenth century may have as much to do with Bryan’s views as the political usefulness for Democratic candidates of conciliating rabidly segregationist southerners. Bryan’s defense of the Ku Klux Klan on the floor of the 1924 Democratic convention went well beyond simple political advantage.

The basic thrust of Kazin’s book is that Bryan deserves study and sympathy for demonstrating how to support progressive secular reforms from a religious perspective, thus justifying the book title, “A Godly Hero.” However, to a greater degree than Kazin is willing to admit, Bryan’s behavior at the 1924 convention and the 1925 trialnot just attacks by liberal intellectualsdemonstrated his intellectual aridity and limited social sympathies, tarnishing the memory of his many earlier contributions to progressive reform.