The ‘culture wars’ which divided the United States in the 1980s and 1990s had a precedent, so Barry Hankins argues, in the 1920s. The issues were different – prohibition and censorship, for example, rather than abortion or gay rights – but the underlying issues of principle were similar. Both eras had their share of adulterous revivalists, as well as philandering presidents – though only in the 1920s was a leading fundamentalist preacher accused of murdering a Catholic critic. In both periods evolution was a hot topic. Religion and sport were closely linked at both times, with the most famous revivalist of the early twentieth century being the former baseball professional, Billy Sunday. In the Twenties, as much as the Eighties, the religious affiliations of presidential candidates were closely scrutinised. In this lively and entertaining volume, Hankins provides a series of stories of religious controversy or sensation in the ‘Roaring Twenties’, each chapter winding up with a discussion of the issues at stake. The dominant Protestants were increasingly divided between fundamentalists and modernists, but their hegemony was threatened both by the increasing numbers and political influence of Roman Catholics and also by the emergence of the ‘cultural liberalism’ advocated by prominent journalists, novelists and lawyers, such as H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis or Clarence Darrow (defence counsel in the ‘Tennessee Monkey Trial’). These ‘liberals’ championed individual autonomy, pouring scorn on the Churches, as well as federal, state or city laws banning alcohol, obscene publications (those that were ‘banned in Boston’) or the teaching of evolution. At the root of the conflicts both of the Twenties and of the Eighties, Hankins suggests, lay two contrasting ideas of freedom and democracy, one based on the rights of the individual and the other on the rights of the community to fashion a ‘good society’. The book raises more questions than it tries to answer. Why, for instance, did the liberals win the battles within the larger Protestant denominations? The scandals described here cannot have helped the fundamentalists, but do not provide a sufficient explanation for their defeat. Is it really true that liberal Protestants found their chief source of authority in individual experience, while fundamentalists were faithful to the Bible, or that liberals adapted their theology to conform to contemporary intellectual and moral trends, while fundamentalists refused to do this? Would it not be more accurate to say that each regarded the Bible as the ultimate authority, and that each was selective both in its use of the Bible and in the aspects of contemporary culture which it accepted or condemned, but that their selections were in many respects quite different? How widespread was the influence of these celebrity ‘cultural liberals’ and what was their wider social base? This book is based mainly on secondary sources, supplemented by contemporary newspaper reports. Specialists will find little that is new, but undergraduates, who are probably the target audience, will find that it presents important issues in an accessible way, and provides an excellent starting-point for classroom discussion.