A Fever In The Heartland

The best book I've read this year, and what a year to read it: when our country is clinging to Democracy by its fingernails, and another racist, misogynistic, bombastic autocratic is trying to gain control, much like the grand wizard in Egan's book. I knew nothing about this history--a shame, for sure--and also found the story chilling, because so many parallel things seem to be happening right now. The story is an important reminder that history does risk repeating itself, and that normal people need to fight like hell to make sure that what happened in 1920s Midwest, and in… show more.

It's a gripping, compelling read. It's fascinating how far a group that fostered hatred could infiltrate American hearts, the clergy, and the government. The parallel to today is poignant. This era explained the abrupt change of Black voters towards Democrats. Great book.

As a professor of criminal law, I often taught the case of People v Stephenson (1932), in which the Indiana courts affirmed the murder conviction of one D.C. Stephenson after a woman whom he had brutally assaulted, sexually and physically, tried to take her own life by swallowing poison.

But until this book, I never knew who Stephenson was—one of the most powerful leaders of the resurgent Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s—nor why the courage of his victim, Madge Oberholtzer, triggered the Klan’s eventual slide back into insignificance. This book, set a century ago, delivers an ominous chill of… show more.

This is a mind-blowing book. It’s also a quick read because the author focused on very rootable individual characters and stories. A Fever in the Heartland tells the story of the Klan’s terrifying rise in the 1920s and their fall.

I knew the Klan had a resurgence in the 1920s, but I had no idea it was this powerful. One-third of White people in Indiana, and a lot of other states, were Klan members. It was big not just in the South but in Oregon, California, and elsewhere. It wasn't just a secret society: a lot of people, both men… show more.

The very first sentence of this book dropped me right into high-drama fiction territory. But while it is a fast-paced thriller, it is not fiction.

In the big picture it taught me so much about why America is still dealing with the deep-seated fear of Black, immigrant, Jewish, and even Catholic Americans that leads to both willful and unintentional discrimination, hate, and violence.

It also made me understand why my Baptist grandparents were unwilling to attend the wedding of my mother to my Catholic father and why my brother and I were always a little outside the tribe.

My only… show more.

This is history as it should be written: well-researched with sharp characterizations and lively prose.

A Fever in the Heartland recounts how a charismatic former salesman promoted the Klan in Indiana in the 1920s.  Glib and intelligent, D.C. Stephenson tapped into the fear of immigrants, Blacks, Catholics, and Jews. Selling robes and other regalia and peddling a mix of entertainment and violence, he made the Klan into a money-making machine.

He made himself rich and the Klan into a power that corrupted politicians, judges, and cops. Stephenson dreamed of a run for President, and but for Madge Oberholtzer, who survived… show more.

This book gives the lie to a vision we may have of an idealized American past.

Egan narrates the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in small-town (and sometimes big-city) America in the 1920s, when ordinary, “decent” people supported an organization that subverted the principles of decency, democracy, and justice.

In my poetry, I strive to temper the beauty of our lives by recognizing the ugliness that often infects the human heart. I hope that my poems, like this book, offer an antidote to self-delusion.

I have always loved Tim Egan’s columns in The New York Times for their clarity and powerful writing.

In this book, he examines the rise of a con man and charlatan who became one of the most powerful political figures in the Midwest and who nearly ran for president – D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan. He was eventually brought down by a woman he sexually abused and whose death he caused, but not before her deathbed testimony destroyed him.

The parallels to modern American politics are inescapable.

Some writers make the unbelievable believable and the impersonal personal. Timothy Egan, like Stacy Schiff and David Grann, has this talent.

This book describes how one evil flimflam artist took over the Ku Klux Klan, the government of an entire state, and threatened to take over the White House before finally being brought down by a jury of his peers. It’s a real page turner, it’s all true, and Egan makes you feel like you were in the rooms where it all happened.