SIX TRIALS

Mr. Brumbaugh, along with three of his confreres at Yale--Henri Peyre, Morris Kaplan, and the late Norwood Russell Hanson, and Oliver Larkin and Daniel Aaron of Smith College have provided six lectures-into-essays on trials which had a portentous impact on ""Western ideas of law and individual rights."" Most of them challenged orthodox complacency and where men died, wrongly, their moral, intellectual or philosophical stances have survived. Namely--Socrates and his pursuit of human excellence and a just society via freedom of speech and inquiry; Galileo, also an intellectual martyr; John Brown who is still not moldering peacefully in the grave, transmogrified messiah; Dreyfus--""tragedy was thrust upon him"" and the mass tragedy of anti-semitism; Sacco & Vanzetti, innocent; Scopes and his defense of educational liberty. The lectures provide a precis of the issues involved, the trials them-selves, the latterday repercussions along with recommended bibliographies and the book suggests itself as particularly useful in and out of the homeroom.