A Fever in the Heartland

November 1, 2022

A retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and prolific author of books about the wars between Indigenous peoples and the U.S. government, Cozzens recounts the early 1800s fighting between the Creek Nation and U.S. government forces (led by first-time combat leader Andrew Jackson)-- A Brutal Reckoning that ended with the infamous Trail of Tears. Egan, a New York Times best-selling author, National Book Award winner, and Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist, examines the terrifying 1920s rise of the Ku Klux Klan, spearheaded by Indiana Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson, and the bravery of Madge Oberholtzer, who countered the Klan at great personal cost in A Fever in the Heartland (75,000-copy first printing). In A Madman's Will, lawyer/author May (Jefferson's Treasure) tells the story of Virginia senator John Randolph's manumission in his will of all 383 people enslaved to him, revealing the senator's ever-changing attitudes toward slavery and how prejudice from the North blocked freedmen from possessing the land Randolph had promised them. Marrell McCollough, the Black man seen in photographs kneeling next to Martin Luther King Jr. when he was assassinated at Memphis's Lorraine Motel in 1968, was a member of an activist group in discussion with King--and, as daughter Seletzky painfully reveals in The Kneeling Man, an undercover Memphis police officer reporting on the group's activities (50,000-copy first printing).

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Starred review from February 13, 2023
The shocking story of how Ku Klux Klan leader David C. Stephenson seized and lost control of the state of Indiana in the 1920s is told in Pulitzer winner Egan’s evocative latest (after A Pilgrimage to Eternity). An itinerant newspaperman and petty criminal, Stephenson took charge of Klan recruiting efforts across the Midwest and was named Grand Dragon of the Realm of Indiana in 1923. Buoyed by skyrocketing enrollment numbers—by 1925, “one in three native-born white males wore the sheets,” Egan writes—Stephenson effectively ran Indiana, controlling the governor, both houses of the state legislature, and a private police force of 30,000 men, which he utilized to “harass violators of Klan-certified virtue.” Though journalists and others sought to counteract the Klan’s influence, Stephenson’s power remained unchecked until he kidnapped and raped a Department of Public Instruction employee named Madge Oberholtzer in 1925. During the incident, Oberholtzer dosed herself with bichloride of mercury; she died an agonizingly slow death 29 days later, but not before she dictated a full account of Stephenson’s crimes. Convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, Stephenson became a symbol of the Klan’s cruelty, hypocrisy, and corruption, and the organization’s grip on Midwestern politics crumbled. Dramatic twists of fate and vivid character sketches distinguish this harrowing look at a forgotten chapter of American history. It’s a certifiable page-turner.

Starred review from February 1, 2023
He was a grifter of the first degree, a smooth-talking con artist, a Machiavellian manipulator. He was also a sexual predator, luring women with his aura of fame and power. As grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, D. C. Stephenson's ambitions did not stop with the organization he shepherded from its Southern roots to dominance in the Midwest. Bullying and buying the loyalty of businessmen, judges, and politicians was not enough for Stephenson. The White House was his ultimate goal, and he might have achieved it were it not for the rape, kidnapping, and subsequent murder charges in the death of Madge Oberholtzer, a well-respected young Indianapolis woman under his employ in the Indiana government. The brutality of her injuries drove Madge to attempt suicide. Thanks to a courageous prosecutor, her subsequent death was linked directly back to Stephenson. His coercive leadership of the 1920s Klan resulted in thousands of new members equally committed to the organization's extreme policies of xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and misogyny. With a probing vibrancy, Egan, winner of the Carnegie Medal, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award, unfurls this powerful tale of a psychopathic zealot who came dangerously close to reshaping America in his warped image. This riveting expos� of a sordid chapter in U.S. history has frightening parallels to present conflicts.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Egan's reputation for gripping nonfiction and his latest searing subject will catalyze avid interest.

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Starred review from March 1, 2023

National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Egan (The Worst Hard Time) exposes a 1920s American political scene filled with characters and themes that resonate today. He unmasks anti-Black, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, fearful, evangelical, hate-filled, resentful, and xenophobic white supremacists desperate to "save" the country. He focuses on David Curtis "D.C." Stephenson (1891-1966), a magnetic charlatan with Napoleonic visions that included becoming a U.S. senator and more. Twenty-seven chapters document Stephenson's rise from a Ku Klux Klan recruiter in Evansville, IN (then the country's most racially segregated city), to Grand Dragon of Indiana, the largest KKK realm ever, with a reputed 400,000 members. Nationally, the KKK included congresspeople, governors, state legislators, county and local officials, police, and more. The book details KKK insider personalities, locally and nationally, along with their corruption, scheming, and squabbling for control, money, and power. The book also chronicles Stephenson's fall as he approached the apex of power when, in a sensational and noteworthy trial, he was convicted of abducting, raping, and murdering Indiana Department of Public Instruction lending library manager Madge Oberholtzer (1896-1925). VERDICT Egan's riveting page-turner offers profound insights to readers willing to peer into layers of American hypocrisy, intolerance, malignant indifference, and public culpability.--Thomas J. Davis

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Starred review from February 15, 2023
A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award chronicles a dark period when the Ku Klux Klan was ascendant. In 1866, in a small town in Tennessee, six White war veterans formed a secret brotherhood to share their disgust about the emancipation of Blacks. By 1868, the Klan had 500,000 members "in every province of the former Confederacy." By the 1920s, the Klan's raids, beatings, lynchings, and arson had spread throughout the country. It was, Egan writes in his shocking, horrifying history, the "largest and most powerful of the secret societies among American men." Klan members included ministers, politicians, judges, policemen, bankers, and businessmen, united in their belief in White supremacy and their virulent hatred of immigrants, Jews, Roman Catholics, and Blacks. Central to Egan's narrative is David C. Stephenson, bluff and arrogant, a manipulator and liar, a vicious sexual predator, a "carouser, a gasbag, a petty thief" who demanded unconditional adoration from his lackeys. Charming when it suited him, ruthless toward his enemies, he harbored an insatiable lust for power. Stephenson's "unbridled energy" fueled the exponential growth of the Klan in Indiana, where, he boasted, "I am the law." Klan members filled positions at every level of government, and Stephenson himself aimed for a presidential run. Klan vigilantes rampaged on morality patrols, and the group allied with the eugenics movement to pass the nation's first forced sterilization law. In 1924, Congress, filled with Klan members, passed the National Origins Act, vastly limiting immigration. Egan reveals the bold efforts of journalists, lawyers, and Black and Jewish leaders to oppose the Klan despite being threatened constantly. He also reveals the scandals and infighting that imperiled Stephenson's position--until one woman's deathbed testimony took him down. The Klan's grievances, the nation's polarization, and a blustering politician who saw efforts to bring him to justice as a "hoax and witch hunt": This riveting history seem disturbingly familiar and undeniably chilling. An excellently rendered, unsettling narrative of America at its worst.

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