Dan Trefethen's Reviews > A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

I expect this book to be banned from Florida schools. It describes a history of overt racism, terror and intimidation throughout America that many people would like to forget.

In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan had thousands of members in many American states, including the north. This book focuses on the man who organized the Klan in Indiana with great success, and placed his hand-picked governor in office as well as numerous other politicians and judges. Under his leadership, the Klan preached sanctimonious values (they were for Prohibition among other things) while using occasional violence to intimidate their foes. The Nazis admitted to studying the methods of the KKK. The KKK showed that most people (white people) would go along with which way the wind was blowing, not wanting to be seen as out of step with their neighbors.

What finally led to their demise was a sensational murder trial. The repugnant sex and violence described in the trial turned many people against them. The book also praises people who stood up to them when they were at the height of power, at great personal risk.

Egan is a journalist who uses a novelistic approach to storytelling. It's all backed up with research, though. He is sensitive to the impression that he couldn't possibly know some of the personal exchanges that happened, so he has a note up front that says that all dialogue and internal monologue are verbatim from cited sources. Otherwise it would be hard to believe.

The principal KKK organizer D.C. Stephenson is so repulsive that it is almost unbelievable, and Egan spends a fair amount of time detailing all Stephenson's horrible acts. While it makes his case, it feels like too much – we get it, already. It's probably not as startling to us today as it would have been in the 1920s.

I needn't point out the clear connections with today's events. They will be obvious to all readers.