Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan

by Nancy MacLean

On Thanksgiving night, 1915, a small band of hooded men gathered atop Stone Mountain, an imposing granite butte just outside Atlanta. With a flag fluttering in the wind beside them, a Bible open to the twelfth chapter of Romans, and a flaming cross to light the night sky above, William Joseph Simmons and his disciples proclaimed themselves the new Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, named for the infamous secret order in which many of their fathers had served after the Civil War. Unsure of their footing in the New South and longing for the provincial, patriarchal world of the past, the men of the second Klan saw themselves as an army in training for a war between the races. They boasted that they had bonded into "an invisible phalanx...to stand as impregnable as a tower against every encroachment upon the white man's liberty...in the white man's country, under the white man's flag."

Behind the Mask of Chivalry brings the "invisible phalanx" into broad daylight, culling from history the names, the life stories, and the driving passions of the anonymous Klansmen beneath the white hoods and robes. Using an unusual and rich cache of internal Klan records from Athens, Georgia, to anchor her observations, author Nancy MacLean combines a fine-grained portrait of a local Klan world with a penetrating analysis of the second Klan's ideas and politics nationwide. No other right-wing movement has ever achieved as much power as the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, and this book shows how and why it did. MacLean reveals that the movement mobilized its millions of American followers largely through campaigns waged over issues that today would be called "family values": Prohibition violation, premarital sex, lewd movies, anxieties about women's changing roles, and worries over waning parental authority. Neither elites nor "poor white trash," most of the Klan rank and file were married, middle-aged, and middle class. Local meetings, or klonklaves, featured readings of the minutes, plans for recruitment campaigns and Klan barbecues, and distribution of educational materials--Christ and Other Klansmen was one popular tome. Nonetheless, as mundane as proceedings often were at the local level, crusades over "morals" always operated in the service of the Klan's larger agenda of virulent racial hatred and middle-class revanchism. The men who deplored sex among young people and sought to restore the power of husbands and fathers were also sworn to reclaim the "white man's country," striving to take the vote from blacks and bar immigrants. Comparing the Klan to the European fascist movements that grew out of the crucible of the first World War, MacLean maintains that the remarkable scope and frenzy of the movement reflected less on members' power within their communities than on the challenges to that power posed by African Americans, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, and white women and youth who did not obey the Klan's canon of appropriate conduct. In vigilante terror, the Klan's night riders acted out their movement's brutal determination to maintain inherited hierarchies of race, class, and gender.

Compellingly readable and impeccably researched, The Mask of Chivalry is an unforgettable investigation of a crucial era in American history, and the social conditions, cultural currents, and ordinary men that built this archetypal American reactionary movement.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Race, Politics, The United States Of America, Ku Klux Klan

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Nancy MacLean is the award-winning author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry (a New York Times “noteworthy” book of the year) and Freedom is Not Enough, which was called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best.” The William Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, she lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Within studies of the 1920s KKK, there has recently been movement of "revisionism," which has questioned the assumptions of earlier writers that the Klan was primarily rural and Southern, has suggested that they were more concerned about curbing the power of Catholic immigrants than about blacks, and has even shown that the KKK was often involved in social reform rather than terrorism. Nancy MacLean, in responding to this academic trend, has been labeled a "re-revisionist" by some. She wrote this book in part to argue that the South remained the heartland of much Klan activity, that blacks along with other minorities suffered during their primacy, and that the Klan was, whatever their apparent good intentions and pr, fundamentally an extreme-right wing hate organization. Her work is important, because it does remind us of a side of the subject that has been largely ignored in previous work.
Nevertheless, I did not find her arguments entirely persuasive. Most of her book is based on records found from one chapter in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, which she claims to be very represntative of the KKK in general, but Georgia had neither the largest number of Klan members, nor the largest per-capita membership at the time (those dubious honors go to Indiana and Oregon, respectively). In her acknowledgements, she gives a left-handed thanks to "International Socialist tendency" (Trotskyites), and there is definitely a smell of materialist determinism and dogmatic leftism to the text. This is particularly noxious when, uninformed by any familiarity with study of fascism, she attempts to argue for the close proximity of American the KKK to European fascist movements. She is rather more effective, however, in using gender as a criterion for analyzing Klan literature and social practice. The book should be read by serious scholars of the subject, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as the one book to read for someone who isn't familiar with the literature.

["Nico" · Rating 5 out of 5]

The connection of the Ku Klux Klan to German Nazis and Italian Fascisti may be more familiar to folks since the release of Wolfenstein 2, and certainly to contemporaries at the time, but situating the Klan in this international context was less common in 2012 when MacLean released Behind the Mask of Chivalry. This serves to explain why this author's hard hitting analysis, while in line with over a century of fascist scholarship and refugee analysis (Neumann, Niemöller, Adorno, Horkheimer, Fromm, Thompson, Postone, Eco, Paxton, Bradbury, etc etc) treads as lightly as it does in its conclusion.

As a writer and organizer friend of mine rightly argued when suggesting this book to me, Behind the Mask of Chivalry is integral to understanding the development of fascism in the States. No other book cuts so directly to the core of fascism in this country. I highly recommend it.

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(Heavy content follows on contemporary fascism/systemic racism)

The themes explored in this book will be easily recognizable to Staters today, with the rise of fascism being so enduring. While David Duke may not have taken the presidency, his endorsed candidate, Donald Trump, would go on to become president four years after this text was released (Trump was recently referred by Rep. Mary Miller as a "victory for white life"). As in the Klan of the 1920s, and Bull Connor at Selma in 1968, all those organizing for a betterment of conditions are derided as "communists", "anarchists", and "satanic". Lynchings like those of Trayvon Martin, Armaud Arbery, and George Floyd, have continued to be a painful reminder of an enduring legacy (the first anti-lynching law in the States passed this year). Slavery remains legal as punishment for crime, and at present 1-in-3 years of black men's lives are spent behind bars in history's largest prison industrial-complex, which holds between 1/5 and 1/4 of the world's incarcerated population. Military worship has been exploited to produce history's highest military spending, producing more emissions than any other single organization (runaway to the extent that the military has had to plan for a climate change it is producing). Evangelical fundamentalists have successfully stripped bodily autonomy from everyone with a uterus, in spite of the biblical support of abortion. Christian Fascism has become a phrase known to most Staters. With mobs of white supremacists routinely marching in the street, conducting vigilante violence, and even attaining office, MacLean stands more than vindicated in her 2012 analysis.

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another well-done study of the most powerful American movement of the far right: the Ku Klux Klan of the 20s. Nancy MacLean dispels a lot of myths about the Invisible Empire such as the “otherness” of its members and their actual motives.

“Behind the Mask of Chivalry” is quite similar to Citizen Clansmen, a study of the Indiana Klan of the 20s I read a week ago. The both books aim to present a different view of the KKK and the actual reason for their members dissatisfaction with the world around them. MacLean states that treating the KKK movement simply as a conflict between the Ku-Klux urban-immigrant America is a flawed way of understanding it. Although the Afro-Americans and the ethnic minorities were convenient contemporary targets, the real source of the Klansmen’s discontent was more deeply rooted.

Nancy MacLean’s work moves beyond the misconceptions and shows that the consistency of the Ku-Klux members’ motives and actions rooted in a common world view, an ideology that enabled them to hold on to their values and detain the economical and social changes.

The site for MacLean’s study is Clarke County, Georgia. Georgia was the birthplace and national headquarters of the revived Ku Klux Klan.

Although the book is not about the Georgia Klan in particular, the Athens Klan was unique in the amount of information it left behind. Unlike most of their peers, its leaders failed to destroy their chapter records, which helped create a fine-grained portrait of the KKK. Yet, she doesn’t particularly succeeded in persuading me that the heartland of the Invisible Empire were the Southern States.

Nancy MacLean situates the Klan members in the world of their day, takes seriously what they did, and analyzes carefully what they said. She lets her characters speak.

“Behind the Mask of Chivalry” is thoroughly researched and contains a lot of interesting details. Definitely worth a read. *Citizen Klansmen* is recommendable too.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nancy MacLean has written, in my estimation, one of the most precise and astoundingly insightful commentaries about the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan. Blending careful historical narration and analysis, MacClean gives her reader an in-depth understanding of how the Klan worked, operated, and what were the symbolic goals of this organization. Any historian looking to write or study this organization would behoove themselves to read MacLean's book. It's too important to miss.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at the same time that I bought MacLean’s Democracy In Chains. It turned out to be a great decision!

MacLean’s focus is on the so-called Second Klan — the Post World War I version — which remains the most powerful and significant version of the group in terms of its national influence. Using a trove of documents from the Athens, GA, Klan and national news coverage of other Klan activities, MacLean exposes the heart of the Klan’s racism but also places the organization’s beliefs near the mainstream of US conservatism. She also provides a glimpse of the Klan in the context of international fascist movements that arose in the wake of the end of WWI.

What I find most striking about the Second Klan is how so many of their values are contained in modern day conservatism in the United States — patriarchy, the second class status of women, a judgmental moral code riddled with hypocrisy, hostility to government that sought to limit its power, and an unhealthy dose of white supremacy ladled on for good measure.

The fact that James Buchanan, the ideological star of Democracy In Chains, first rose to political prominence developing schemes to lead Virginia’s “massive resistance” to the 1954 US Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case only serves to reinforce the connection between the Klan and modern US conservatism.

This is a timely read today even though it was published in 1994.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

The organization in this book doesn't make sense. It's probably one of the worst written books I've ever read. Some of the information was interesting though.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This could be a bit of an eye-opener: Firstly, that the KKK, which now consists of smatterings of marginal types, was once a thriving organization with literally thousands of members; also, that said organization, which is generally depicted as consisting of low-rent backwoods yahoos, mainly sprang forth from the upper middle class (business owners, govt. officials, etc.). MacLean digs deep into what records there are of the times to bring forth a vivid history. Recommended.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A case study of the (re)formation of the KKK in Athens, Georgia during the early interwar period, this book is predominantly an argument against the idea that the Klan were in any way alien or aberrant to American society, situating them instead as an extreme version of the fraternal societies with whom they frequently shared members. The Klan’s membership was predominantly comprised of lower-middle class but upwardly mobile men who saw industrialization, labor organization, and nascent black political agency and independence as a zero-sum challenge to their (still tenuous) position within the southern economic and political system. (But although the author relies primarily on material / class analytical frames, she does also note that not every aggrieved white male opted to join the Klan — social networks and social reinforcement mattered immensely for its spread.) Of course, the Klan’s use of vigilante violence in support of racial hierarchy distinguished it to a degree from other reactionary groups, but even that drew on previous practice, and the Klan’s ideologues made rich use of individual rights and populist (the Klan’s opposition to “monopoly” chain stores, often paired with anti-Semitic rhetoric aimed at the owners, was interesting and new to me) American rhetorical traditions in their mobilization efforts which remain popular tropes to this day. There is also quite a bit about efforts at maintaining social control over women, both in and outside the home, rooted in rhetoric of “chivalry” and “honor” that saw female family members as another form of property. (It’s far from a perfect analogy given the different clerical/laity structures, but certainly there are parallels in this regard between the Klan and a group like the Afghan Taliban.)

In the end the book suggests that this iteration of the Klan collapsed in part thanks to its own success at suppressing these minority groups (removing obvious enemies to rail against) and the end of the post-war recession (which was particularly hard-felt in Georgia’s cotton and textile sector), as well as a good measure of factionalism and infighting, but it certainly set the tenor for future reactionary politics. The direct echoes to our most recent round of debates about “economic anxiety” are there on every page, and underscore the intrinsic interlinkage of these issues with those of racial and white majoritarian politics throughout U.S. history. Highly recommended as an insight into the mobilization efforts of “extremist” groups, as well as U.S. political and civil rights history more broadly.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nancy MacLean’ Behind the Mask of Chivalry examines the Ku Klux Klan at its most insidious: the opening of the 1920s. Using its activity in Athens, Georgia, as a case study, she probes its tactics, its composition, its worldview, and its impact. She demonstrates that the Klan’s lingering horror stems not from its penchant for burning homes and whipping people, but that the most respectable castes of society could hide behind its robes. Viewing the Klan essentially as a reactionary, populist socio-political movement, she offers an intriguing comparison between it and the fascist movements in Italy and Germany, which were on the rise as well. Though not a serious rival to The Fiery Cross as far as Klan history goes, for the reader only interested in the Klan at its modern height, it should serve fairly well. It has limits, however, in that the author uses the history to scratch an itch against male privilege. This is essentially a feminist history of the Klan that sees a war between the sexes at every turn.

Despite the Klan’s association with ‘white trash’, more than half of the members of the Athens group were independent business owners, managers, or small freeholders. They were the very stock of citizenry, in fact, including in their ranks mayors and pastors. While there were a few unskilled workers in the Athens organization, the majority were men of some accomplishment – if nothing else, then masters at a trade. They were diverse and largely successful, far from being the bitter and dispossessed ex-soldiers of the 1870s who sought revenge against their imagined enemies in the form of "northerners and Negroes". Their concerns and fears were diverse, but the Klan would unite them in one simple message: old-fashioned America was in peril. Its menaces were both economic and social, both real and imagined. The United States had only entered the Great War for a year, but it would be enough to radically alter the nation: the wartime agricultural boom led to failing farms after Europe began to recover, for instance. Other social consequences of the war were a renewed sense of resistance from black soldiers who discovered there was more to the world than institutional racism, and increasing control by the government of every aspect of life. This was an age of industrial concentration, of department stores like A&P out-competing smaller firms. Fear of business conspiracies abounded; with so much capital being controlled by so few hands, takeovers by a corporate elite were a common object of dread. The transformation of society by science, government, and capital had completely outpaced the moderating hand of tradition, leading to drastic changes in social customs. A family's move from an agricultural homestead to wage-warning in the city, for instance, disrupted some of the ties that bound children to the care of their parents. Instead of working around the family farm, young people were paid pages that they felt a sense of individual ownership over. Emboldened by this, they explored the new world of the growing city, and all of its temptations -- like dance halls and pool clubs.
.
In answer to all this stress and fear came the Klan, assuring parents and citizens that their fears were justified, that true Americanism was under attack and needed defenders. This was an age of civic and fraternal organizations, far more active than they are today. The Klan had all of their attractions, plus the costumes and rituals of older societies, and it promised to do something about the problems faced by concerned traditionalists. Racism is the Klan's home territory, but MacLean's research indicates how broadly the Klan's sheets billowed: over half of the recorded violence done by the Athens klan, for instance, had white targets, and this was from an area bound to be more racial than most. The Klan attacked blacks who questioned their subordination under an elite, yes, but they also attacked men accused of not supporting their wives. They were footsoldiers of Prohibition, leading the fight against purported moral decay even though their leaders were known to knock a few jugs back. (Hypocrisy seems to be endemic to the human condition.) The klan functioned on many levels: first, it offered a forum for concerns to be voiced and encouraged; it knit members together with socials and consumer-based activism, in which Klansmen only patronized the stores of other Klansmen; and, when it occasioned, offered a sanctified use of force to take down those deemed malefactors. The klan was more than a criminal gang: it was a tribal-civic religion, combining Christianity with racial purity -- a rebirth of paganism, almost, with a binary focus on the Tribe and its god, both supported by willing warriors.

The religious aspects of the Klan combined with its embrace of violence invites comparison to the Fascist movements in Europe, which also not only defended tradition against modernity, but combined it with an absolute worship of the Nation and its symbols. MacClean points to the Nazi's party's success during periods of economic depression, and and the Klan's own decline after America recovered from the postwar bust, to suggest that both were born of and sustained by severe socio-economic stress. Had the United States endured as long a downturn as Weimar Germany, she muses, the Klan might have well brought fascism to the United States, wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. Given their success in the midwest (practically taking over Indiana), that may have been a possibility, but as MacClean notes most Klansmen had a serious ideological animus against dictatorship. Their hatred for the Catholic church, for instance, fixated on the notion of papal authority.

As useful as MacLean's work into the Klan's demographics is, indicating how popular it became by masquerading as a civically-minded fraternal organization, MacLean's sexual hangup presents serious baggage. Not only does she dismiss the entire concept of honor as one of male ownership over women, but she reduces male bonding rituals to suppressed homosexuality. Seeing sexual undertones in every relationship is one of the more tiresome aspects of the modern mind, and does not serve this history well. MacLean also seems to place blame on the subjects' concerns, rather than than their actions: how dare parents be concerned about their children risking their health and futures in premature sexuality? Bring on the STDs and abortion, baby, it's time for liberation. She also uniquely targets white men as being the reactionaries, as if their wives (enlisted in a Women of the KKK) or black men didn't share those concerns about their children's futures. Granted, the villains here are white men, but MacLean singles out the concern, the very act of judgement. Moderns don't like to be judged, but evaluating events as good or ill or some balance of the two, is how humans exist.

Behind the Mask of Chivalry is serviceable if limited. Its foray into the demographics of the second klan is more extensive than The Fiery Cross, but that work held its own in that respect and offered reams more substance with less editorializing.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excerpts from my book review from my social movements class:

In Mask of Chivalry by Nancy MacLean, she writes on the rise, and duration, and
briefly touches on the fall of the second Ku Klux Klan. However, this book tells the story of
an omnipresent force that occupied American society whose rhetoric and insecurities have
survived through modern times. The main takeaway I believe most readers will gain from this
book is recognizing the reactionary viewpoints the largest social movement in American
history espoused and how that level of influence does not disappear overnight, no matter how
short-lived its peak was.

MacLean describes the lifestyle of a Klansman outside their work and extrajudicial
activities. The Ku Klux Klan had barbecuers, hosted weddings and funerals, picnics and
parades, mutual aid drives, and events that boosted social cohesion. This sort of organization,
of radical mutual aid and care for one another, is desired by many but chiseled away by the
culture of hyper-individualism bred not only within the Klan but the nations culture itself. If
we do not create adequate social institutions to replace organizations like the clan, ill-
intentioned organizers will do their part in inflicting what the Klan did and what fascists continue to do. This level of social cohesion and community does not need to be drawn along
the lines of race, religion, or gender, but can be drawn along the lines of class.

The most fascinating aspect of this book that binds it to modern society is how the
klan uses rhetoric towards saving the middle class and small businesses, stopping the
Bolsheviks, distaste for high finance, anti-urbanism, overly rebellious youth, and law and
order which is eerily similar to what still exists in far right to moderate left circles today.
Moving forward, modern leftists and progressive movements must be careful whom they
align with ideologically as populist, reactionary movements often use the same language as
leftists but their targets or intentions are not the same. Through the Mask of Chivalry,
MacLean encapsulates her argument in her final line “it was those with the least ‘stake in
society’ who had the most stake in defending democracy.”

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one took me a while to read because of the subject matter. Overall great book though; it was easy to read.

Fantastic book to grasp an entry level understanding of republicanism, populism, and racialism in the 1920s. The book focuses on Athens, Georgia with comparisons made to other areas of George, the South, and the United States.

MacLean starts the book by laying a solid framework of conservative ideologies and attitudes of the petite bourgeoise (lower middle class) from the late-1910s to the early-1930s. After the reader has grasped a simple understanding of the ideologies of Southern populism and the Ku Klux's founding principles, she provides the classic examples of violence and domestic terrorism of the KKK.

With this framework, the violence (both verbal, physical and in a few cases, written) is then analyzed to see how fear leads to a desire for control and that control can easily engender violence. Populism (whether conservative or liberal) creates an "us verses them" mentality that can be dangerous when measured upon the ideologies of the "us".

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historian Nancy MacLean has written in interesting study with her book Behind the Mask of Chivalry. Focusing her study on Athens, Georgia, MacLean attempts to extrapolate and blend events in this city into the national revival of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s. Utilizing a neo-marxist approach she offers new insights into the role of gender and labor issues. Her well researched work is based on an exhaustive variety of sources. While she does offer some provocative insights and excellent data, some of her attempts at expansion to the national level are not reflective of the focus of my research in Texas. While at times this book does make for slow reading, it is due to her earnestness to prove her point. If one was doing an examination of the Klan in Georgia this would be an excellent source

[Kb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I forget how recently the shift from the Dunning School has happened in US history. MacLean argues convincingly that the Klan of the '20s was a menace and enforcer of white supremacy. She demonstrates how although we like to write off the Klan as white trash and aberrations, the Klan was made up of the middle class and routinely surfaces in US history during times of distress and ebb of the Left in US life. She also traces how class, race and gender shaped the Klan - and considering the date of the publication, was probably one of the first. It's a good overview of the 2nd Klan and gives the reader something to think about by tying the Klan into the international Right at the time.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting book about the resurrgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920's. The book was very fact based and was especially relevant because a great deal of the information had to do with Athens, GA (where I am), and all of it was new to me.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating parallels between the conditions of the early 20th century that led to reactionary populism and the second iteration of the KKK and today. But boy, is this dryyyyyyyy.

[Katy Lovejoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was kind of boring but I don't know anything about the KKK outside of what is mentioned in like preteen novels

[Gabe Chang-Deutsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

GOATed. Her chapter on the Klan as being composed of downwardly mobile petit bourgeois/reactionary populism, and the gender history are 🥶.

[Nilda Brooklyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

In our current political climate of racist anti-immigrant rhetoric and "birther" movements a historical understanding of the KKK is important. Also, as a young white woman, understanding the guise of protecting white female virtue as a tool for racial violence and domination gives a critical view on the contemporary debate of reproductive freedom and rape laws. While access to universal health care and freedom from sexual violence are human rights, U.S. legal structures around both issues have a sorted past of eugenics and lynching.
MacLean does an excellent job placing the political power of the KKK into context by separating the spectacular of burning crosses and hooded figures from the police, state senators, county judges and other professional class men that made up the membership. This is the power of her book, the KKK is not about a few rotten southern apples so poorly displayed in many Hollywood movies. The KKK was a national organization with significant political clout that made lasting impact on white supremacy power over private property, criminal codes and individual rights.

[Al]

I am struggling to understand what make someone watch FOX News or follow Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, etc. only to wind up in complete opposition to the exact government policies that would benefit them the most. What makes approximately 1% of the US population vehemently opposed to the government looking out for their own best interests?

I've always chalked it up to them being united by their hate. Not overt, cross burning and lynching racism. But the subtle, insidious hatred of comfortable, middle class people like the ones I grew up with in Northwest Indiana.

So I decided to read a book about hate.

And from the beginning Nancy K. MacLean makes it clear that the second Ku Klux Klan -- the one that was so powerful in the 1920s that it is estimated to have claimed the membership of one out of every four native-born, protestant, white males in Indiana -- was motivated by fear.

And I thought of Glenn Beck. Then I said, "Now I'm on to something."

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

MacKlean argues that the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was based in the politics of reactionary Populism: dedicated to white supremacy and conservative values. While MacKlean thus connects Klan activity to nationally entrenched political networks, much of her evidence and narrative is based in Athens Georgia. This disconnect rendered her argument less compelling and less convincing. However, while other scholars have argued for the unifying influence of white supremacy, a strength of Maclean's account is her attention to the targeted subordination of class, gender, and religion by the Klan. MacKlean complicates more simplistic understanding of white supremacy in early 20th century America beyond issues of racism.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The history of the making of the second Ku Klux Klan starting in 1915 is scary. MacLean tells the story grounded in a case study of Athens, Georgia. To see how their view of Protestant Christianity was bound up with their fears of a changing world and how they felt entitled to use violent vigilante means to control African-Americans, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, and women is frightening. We still have strong strains of this worldview today.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing discussion of the interrelation of racism and gender politics. Unfortunately there are some holes in the data the book is founded on (specifically, MacLean fails to account for the chronological changes of the Klan's popularity).

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent.