Charlottesville: An American Story

by Deborah Baker

“[Baker] shows how coordinated resistance against white supremacists both can work and will be required again in the coming years. A vivid account that capably illuminates the evils half-hidden under a flickering torch.”— Kirkus Reviews , starred review

In August 2017, over a thousand neo-Nazis, fascists, Klan members, and neo-Confederates descended on a small southern city to protest the pending removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Within an hour of their arrival, the city’s historic downtown was a scene of bedlam as armored far-right cadres battled activists in the streets. Before the weekend was over, a neo-Nazi had driven a car into a throng of counterprotesters, killing a young woman and injuring dozens.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Deborah Baker has written a riveting and panoptic account of what unfolded that weekend, focusing less on the rally’s far-right leaders than on the story of the city itself. University, local, and state officials, including law enforcement, were unable or unwilling to grasp the gathering threat. Clergy, activists, and organizers from all walks of life saw more clearly what was coming and, at great personal risk, worked to warn and defend their city.

To understand why their warnings fell on deaf ears, Baker does a deep dive into American history. In her research she discovers an uncannily similar event that took place decades before when an emissary of the poet and fascist Ezra Pound arrived in Charlottesville intending to start a race war. In Charlottesville, Baker shows how a city more associated with Thomas Jefferson than civil unrest became a flashpoint in a continuing struggle over our nation’s founding myths.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Audiobook, Religion, True Crime, American History

Audible Audio

First published June 3, 2025

About the author

Deborah Baker was born in Charlottesville and grew up in Virginia, Puerto Rico and New England. She attended the University of Virginia and Cambridge University. Her first biography, written in college, was Making a Farm: The Life of Robert Bly, published by Beacon Press in 1982.

After working a number of years as a book editor and publisher, in 1990 she moved to Calcutta where she wrote In Extremis; The Life of Laura Riding. Published by Grove Press and Hamish Hamilton in the UK, it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1994. Her third book, A Blue Hand: The Beats in India was published by Penguin Press USA and Penguin India in 2008.

In 2008–2009 she was a Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis C. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at The New York Public Library. There she researched and wrote The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism, a narrative account of the life of an American convert to Islam, drawn on letters on deposit in the library’s manuscript division. The Convert, published by Graywolf and Penguin India, was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award in Non-Fiction.

In August 2018, she published her fifth work of non-fiction, The Last Englishmen: Love, War and the End of Empire.

She has two children and is married to the writer Amitav Ghosh. They divide their time between Brooklyn and Goa.

Reviews

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charlottesville is packed full of details that help to explain the systemic racism that we can't seem to move beyond. There were so many different factions involved in the events of August 2017 that converged, collided and exploded that left many unanswered questions. Baker has done an amazing job of filtering the details into a story that finds the truth and puts a human face on the people involved.

I was quickly immersed in the building tension, and unable to sleep I finished what turned into a terrifying outcome that the news coverage never truly captured. The protesters who came to Charlottesville to maintain the supremacy of the white race were full of fear, itching for a fight and led by people who wanted a crowd to support them. It's very reminiscent of what happened on January 6, 2021. The people who disagreed with the protestors were betrayed by their local and state politicians, left unprotected by their local police, and bore the brunt of the injuries and the death of their own.

If this was just a bad story of the past it would be a relief. But it is the story we are living now. A swindler president who believes that he alone is the law and who pardoned the legally convicted January 6 rioters. A political party that has been hijacked by a monied minority that seeks to tear down our government. The movement to severely restrict speech disliked by the supreme commander.

It is sometimes hard to see what lies beneath the surface of any culture, North or South. It may provide a veil of security that's assumed, or one that leaves citizens in a constant state of feeling vulnerable and unprotected. In this book, we see how America really works when we don't take care of each other.

We can change that.

[Florence Buchholz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel regret that the small city of Charlottesville, Virginia has become defined by the Nazi inspired riot that took place there on August 11th and 12th of 2017 as the title of this book suggests.

I have been a resident of Charlottesville since 1980. I was present at only one of the events described by Ms. Baker; a precursor to August 12th when a few Klansmen appeared downtown. They were pitiful in their tawdry robes. They were also greatly outnumbered by protesters. The Klan only stayed a short time. After they were ushered out by police, the city teargassed local residents for protesting. So you can see I am not an objective bystander.

I did not enjoy this book. To me, it felt superficial and unfocused. And quite a bit of the story is missing. Ms. Baker introduces a multitude of characters without much background information. Their actions are covered in minute, tedious detail while the big picture remained unclear.

Charlottesville has a painful history of racism that was sorely neglected in this book. Surely, the decision to close all public schools rather than implement court ordered integration deserves more than a cursory few pages. In addition, the impact of people's lives when the historic Black neighborhood of Vinegar Hill was razed, cannot be adequately covered in a few paragraphs. Much buried resentment surfaced when the city began to consider removing statues honoring the confederacy.

And finally, the missing parts of the story. What was the impact of the violence on people's lives? The trials of those who invaded the city went on for years. They were not included in the book. And what kind of a person was Heather Heyer? Why was she willing to put herself in danger? Her mother is articulate and willing to share her feelings. She seems to be almost excluded. The book was a great disappointment to me. I hope someone writes a better one in the future, based on indepth research with a sharper focus.

Well, at least, Robert E Lee and his trusty Traveller have been melted down into a fine piece of brass.

[Ashby Dodd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deborah Baker's Charlottesville takes a hard look at the 2017 Unite the Right rally - and the messy, painful history that set the stage for it. It's well-researched, well-written, and full of the kind of context that the news coverage lacked. But I'll be honest: it reads more like a history textbook than a book about history, and that made it a bit of a slog at times.

Baker does a good job spotlighting the voices of Charlottesville residents- activists, clergy, city leaders - who saw the storm coming and tried to do something about it. She also connects the events to a similar chapter from the 1950s, when another white supremacist came to town looking to cause chaos. The parallels are uncomfortable, to say the least.

I definitely came away knowing more than I did going in, but it was a heavy read. Maybe if I'd picked it up at a different time, in a different political climate, it would've landed differently. Still, it's a thoughtful and important book - even if it's not the easiest to get through.

Thank you to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for an advanced reader's copy; all opinions expressed in this review are my own.

[Harry Niles · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the aim of this book is admirable, but I didn’t feel as though there was an argument here. What do you want to say with a book like this which spans over a hundred year history, and doesn’t end, in my opinion, with a take or a rationale. Good job summarizing the history of far right discourse, but I wish there was more analysis personally.

[Julie M · Rating 4 out of 5]

OMG-wading through this book was a labor of ? love? Not going to lie--it was a monumental effort to read and almost 1/3 of the pp. are notes, footnotes and acknowledgements. I was five days overdue on this lib. loan. It had to be a challenge for any reader, teacher, researcher or social scientist to document the roots of the alt-right events that erupted in Charlottesville-one of my favorite US cities-in 2017. Deborah Baker writes so thoroughly and compellingly about these dark months and weeks leading up to the torch march and rally. And she gives us a warning about the future. Shocking and dispiriting, Charlottesville is an American Story we cannot be proud of. Fighting racism and fascism is just a part of it, and everyone's responsibility, she argues. Baker also has an incredible bio and backlist of books.

[Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

The way she attempted to blackwash statistics on violent crime felt so incredibly warm and compelling. Also, one of her subject's comparison of Trayvoon Martin to Jesus rang truer than the Liberty Bell. After all, Jesus wandered around assaulting random people for messing with his swag.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masterful research. Nonfiction, the topic’s depth takes your breath away. The insight of ‘Jews will not replace us’, Charlottesville, America’s Nazis. Short of being an ‘aficionado’ of Charlottesville and history, I would not recommend it….

[Ben Donovan · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you've seen me in the past week, you've probably already heard me talk about this book significantly more than you expected. struggling with how to rate the book for reasons that i'll try to summarize here.

highs - If you have even the littlest bit of interest in reading this book, I would encourage you to. It's well written and engaging, incredibly organized/informative, and a pretty remarkable story both of Charlottesville local politics and the broader trends that they represent. The book spent 2/3 of its space on the Charlottesville and VA statue politics & the preparations for the event, and I thought the structure and depth of that work was a serious plus. The chapter on the A11 torch march was easily the standout, with both a clear narrative and real emotional resonance. maybe it's me, but I was having actual physical reactions while reading this chapter. For the first piece of academic history on the event, this exceeded my expectations.

lows - the author (in her own words) is an archival historian, and by choosing a topic this recent she left herself a choice to either only use archival information or to attempt to supplement what's out there with additional interviews. confronted with this, she decided to only interview the groups she termed "counterprotestors", and I think that is where the book really fell short. Where the archives and court records and law enforcement information presented a VERY clear picture of the planning on all sides for A11/12, this really let her down in the actual writing of A12th. The writing became one sided and, more importantly, I completely lost track of the narrative at times as we started to include third and fourth and fifth parties (militias, antifa, etc.) that had little to no depth and who's motives and backstories were often missing. The last two chapters felt jumbled and confusing, and left me turning to documentaries and livestream footage (which is just as confusing).

all in all, would recommend, with the caveat that this book is really strong up through (in my opinion) the last two chapters. I am excited (feels like the wrong word) for a more complete history of the actual day of A12 to come out to fill that hole, but am glad that I read this and want to apologize again now to everyone that I have already and will continue to talk to about this book.

[CB_Read · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is really personal for me. I was immediately interested in this book, but I'm not sure what I expected it to do for me. I'm glad I read it, but much of it didn't sit right with me.

The best thing I can say about this new report is all of the valuable, painstaking background research on Virginia and Charlottesville and its history of white supremacy that the author has produced. That really added important context to the events of August 12th and its aftermath. I especially appreciated how the author privileges from the beginning the vastly overlooked perspectives of Charlottesville's Black community. That was the right move to tell this story.

The biggest disadvantage this book has, for me personally, is how it reads like the author is learning all of this for the first time herself. It's a detached recounting on something that I experienced directly, which is difficult to reconcile. The abundance of details, at times the overabundance of details, did not make for a more impactful or complete story. The characterization of real people, by the use of proper titles and nicknames, was also a bit off-putting. I learned a lot from this book, but at the same time, I felt like my own experience of these events eclipsed what I could learn from reading about it from a more historical perspective.

This is a truly important story that set the tone for the first Trump administration, that presaged the January 6th riot, and that has continued unabated in our present moment. But, for me personally, this well-researched history was not an effective or affective way of telling this story. It's a very difficult story to tell.

I would still encourage others to read this because of how well it introduces and engages with the idea of contemporary white supremacy in small-town Virginia and America at large.

[Nathan Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was extremely depressing, devastating even. But having lived through this period from afar, probably the peak of my being so tuned into politics and the attendant crises it was making me physically ill, it really paints a picture of a time and impressively turns the absolute confusing mass of information flowing forth from the hate crime crisis event documented here into a coherent, compelling narrative. I've often wondered how historians will handle all of the constantly shifting, disappearing forms of mass communication that have helmed the narrative of our public lives for the past decade-plus, and Baker's work is the most impressive paring down of it all I've seen to date, even as she admits she may be trying to make sense of a world that is no longer hers to understand.

As reflexively upsetting as the last chapter (about the killing of Heather Heyer and the injuries of a multitude of others) is, I have to also throw a bit of praise toward Baker for managing to fit some mordant humor into the first half of the book. She needn't resort to any embellishment to make Neo-Nazis look as stupid and feckless -- albeit enormously dangerous -- as Paul Thomas Anderson does in his latest film. But I chuckled several times remembering what outrageously stupid nitwits guys like Richard Spencer were, and I'm thankful that they're at least a little less in my face these days.

[Chandler Lilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say I enjoyed reading this book would be a truth and a lie. Sometimes I had to sit up and think, “this really happened. This insane thing really happened.” In the Virginia I know and love something this crazy seems so far removed.

Deborah Baker does an excellent job explaining the historical and current context that led to and created the events of August 12th. Her book is well-researched and well-written. As far as improvements, there were a lot of names to keep track of, although that is far from her fault. The list at the beginning greatly helped. However, it would have been nice to hear more of their stories following the events. Additionally, some of the politically charged language could have been rewritten with a possibly milder tone.

Additionally, I enjoyed the interludes and the wisdom given from Ms. Baker’s own life. I had the pleasure of listening to her speak about the book at a Book Talk in Charlottesville. The quote about her father’s book in the second interlude may have been my favorite in the entire work: “what men may sincerely believe they are fighting for is often unrelated to the consequences of their doing so.” Deep stuff.

If you’re considering reading this book, do it. I was grossly uniformed as to the full events of August 12th and this book helped me understand what really happened. It’s a book that calls you to action to never let this happen again. And we will never let this happen again.

[Greg · Rating 1 out of 5]

While there is no doubt that the author expended considerable time and effort to interview an incredible range of people before she sat down to write this book, I lament the fact that her editor(s) didn't do a better job in assisting her in "tightening up" a book with far too many characters and with major narrative "lines" somewhat confusedly intertwined.

I sure wanted this book to "work" as I am convinced, as is the author, that what happened at Charlottesville was the consequence of long-developing forces of both ancient origin -- racism against Black people and a "romantic" view of the pre-Civil War South that cannot stand up to historical realities -- that combined with the 21st century upsurge in nationalist populism that is also enthralled with authoritarian leaders.

However, I just simply "gave up" after 100 pages because a) I just couldn't keep track of the myriad various characters who played both major and minor roles in the unfolding events, and b) the book lacked the clarity of evolving "thematic" lines or lessons that would have aided the reader in navigating the blur of people and words.

The end result, in my opinion, is probably nearly unreadable for most readers.

What a shame!

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember watching the news reports when this happened. The most depressing thing about reading this book is how nothing has changed, including on how the news media reports on events. It's true sometimes both sides should be given equal weight, but that is not true in every case. Saying that Trump claimed he did not Shylock was an antisemitic slur is one thing, doing so without pointing out Trump's history of antisemitic statements isn't both sides however. It is bad reporting. That's partly the point of this book.

It's true the book might not be as in depth as some might wish. To be fair, if it did offer more detail about the city's history, the book would be at least twice the size. It clocks in at just under 400 pages, not counting the endnotes and index. That said, it still is a good account of what happened. The focus is on those who tried to stop the Unite the Right racists.

It is frustrating to read because Trump's reaction to it should have been disqualifying even if Jan 6 had not happened. The fact that it wasn't, is a indictment of America but also have how the media covers certain politicians and events.

[Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most fascinating part of this book is its use of social media posts as vital source material. Since so much of the planning and communicating during this 2017 event took place via social media, the author makes sure to use that in the telling of the story. The sheer amount of online dialogue, trolling, doxxing, hate speech and planning that took place before and during this August 2017 event in Charlottesville was revealing to me, because I do not engage in the kinds of platforms that were used here. The book reads in some ways like a modern war tale, as the author describes in great detail the steps different individuals and groups took throughout the town over this weekend. Reading this book makes most of the divisions in this country right now feel less surprising, as the arc of modern history becomes clearer. That said, the individual lives and narratives are missing here as there's a lot of who, what, when, where and how, with the need for more of the why behind these stories. The author also did not interview those on the far right who planned the demonstrations, which restricts the capacity for this book to work as a full window or mirror for the reader.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well researched using documents, videos as well as many interviews with witnesses, it shocked me into realizing how little I knew about the event even though i watched it from my couch as it unraveled. The amount of hate groups that assembled in Charlottesville, most, heavily armed with guns, knives, pepper spray, etc. and paraded around with torches one night, trying to frighten all the residents and students as well as instigating fights the following day, culminating in one of the men driving into a group of anti white supremacy protesters, killing one and injuring many others. I know these groups exist and they feed of each other’s hate and say outrageous things however one called a group of Jewish children a boxcar, as opposed to a gaggle or school, that will remain with me forever.

[Nolan Stout · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is just so boring. The audiobook narration is even worse. 1-the author goes on these random tangents and it totally derails the narrative. 2-she writes about things like she’s going to the zoo for the first time. 3- she gives pet names to some people in one part because she has to just listen to the audio of a meeting. I don’t know, maybe I’m way too close to the situation after covering the city government for the newspaper right after this, but this just isn’t it. This had some spots with potential that were just completely decimated by the writing style and storytelling ability. Could not finish it.

[Jeni Enjaian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember feeling horrified when I learned about these events in real time. Reading this thorough analysis of the contributing factors to and of the event itself in a time when events like this driven by similar horrific inhumane ideologies happen with numbing frequency felt more than a little surreal. Baker structured the narrative extremely well, leaving no doubt as to causation and future effects. I wish I could recommend this book as solely a work of history and not also as a way to better understand the current times in the US.

[Barbara McVeigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed research that takes the reader minute by minute through the events in Charlottesville, Virginia. Great historical context, too.
I’m still not sure if the author has completely answered the question: “What did I miss?” I’m reading “The Ideological Brain” by Leon Zmigrod in conjunction with Deborah Baker’s book to help answer that question. Both authors recently appeared on a panel together at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

[Meri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, this one was engaging and difficult to read at the same time, considering the current atmosphere we're living in. I moved outside of Charlottesville a few years ago and only knew about the awful events of August 2017 from news and overviews online. This book was a terrifying timeline using social media and interviews with many of the main people involved in the counter-protests and/or eyewitnesses.

[Katharine Roth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to learn history of the town in which I grew up that I wasn’t aware of. My family moved to Charlottesville in 1957 and missed the events of 1956. They either weren’t spoken of or were glossed over.

I felt like Baker’s retelling of the events on August 11 and 12 was a mishmash of names of individuals, groups, streets. Maps and lists would have been a great resource in the book.

[Barbara Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book - history set up well. Skimmed the second half because I just finished the book - 24 Hours in Charlottesville so I knew much of the detail.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Woke nonsense

[Sara Lakritz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dull, convoluted writing. I couldn't finish it. I left it in a Little Free Library for someone else to try.

[John Machata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid detailing of recent evolution of white nationalism.

[Timothy Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heavy yet Important book that unpacks a dark weekend and an even darker history of an amazing city. I will be thinking of these stories for a long time!

[East Greenbush Community Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very engrossing and terrifying account of the people on both sides of the horrors in Charlottesville.

[Mythili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book and interviewing Deborah Baker for Intelligence Squared was very cathartic.

[Tracey Labgold · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read.

[Jim Blessing · Rating 2 out of 5]

I skimmed this book. It was way more detailed than I liked.

[Kevin Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are a deeply stupid country.