The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought

"Jacoby writes with wit and vigor, affectionately resurrecting a man whose life and work are due for reconsideration" (The Boston Globe).

During the Gilded Age, which saw the dawn of America's enduring culture wars, Robert Green Ingersoll was known as "the Great Agnostic." The nation's most famous orator, he raised his voice on behalf of Enlightenment reason, secularism, and the separation of church and state with a power unmatched since America's revolutionary generation. When he died in...