74 books like Women of the Klan

By Kathleen M. Blee,

Here are 74 books that Women of the Klan fans have personally recommended if you like Women of the Klan. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Inside the Klavern, the Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s

Jeff Stookey Author Of Dangerous Medicine

From my list on the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Oregon and the USA.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I first moved to Portland, Oregon, I heard about the 1988 murder of an Ethiopian student by skinheads of the White Aryan Resistance. A famous trial subsequently bankrupted that white supremacist organization. When I began writing my trilogy, set in 1923, I learned about the strength of the Oregon KKK during the 1920s. I could see a direct line between the bigotry of that era and contemporary Portland. The more I studied the Klan of the 20s, the more I knew this information had to be part of my novels. Besides these book recommendations, I read numerous articles about Klan history. Everyone should learn this history.

Jeff's book list on the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Oregon and the USA

Jeff Stookey Why did Jeff love this book?

As a writer, this book enabled me to get inside the mindset of Eastern Oregon Klan members in the 1920s. The heart of the book is the weekly meeting minutes of a local KKK chapter, which allowed me to see through the eyes of the men who made up this organization from May 1922 through April 1924. Their concerns included recruiting new members, supporting Klan-friendly political leaders at all levels of government, preventing Catholics from employment in teaching and other positions, and supporting a state bill that would ban Catholic schools. All this helped me create realistic characters with social and political views that are very different from my own.

By David A. Horowitz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Inside the Klavern, the Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is an annotated collection of the minutes of a thriving Ku Klux Klan in La Grande, Oregon, between 1922 and 1924. The most complete set of Klan minutes ever uncovered, these documents illustrate the inner workings of a Klan chapter of more than 300 members at the time when the national membership reached into the millions and the Invisible Empire was at the peak of its power. Through an extensive introduction and conclusion as well as brief notes previewing each installment of the minutes, the author seeks to place these documents in historical perspective. The La Grande minutes demonstrate…


Book cover of Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland: Sex, Vice & Misdeeds in Mayor Baker's Reign

Jeff Stookey Author Of Dangerous Medicine

From my list on the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Oregon and the USA.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I first moved to Portland, Oregon, I heard about the 1988 murder of an Ethiopian student by skinheads of the White Aryan Resistance. A famous trial subsequently bankrupted that white supremacist organization. When I began writing my trilogy, set in 1923, I learned about the strength of the Oregon KKK during the 1920s. I could see a direct line between the bigotry of that era and contemporary Portland. The more I studied the Klan of the 20s, the more I knew this information had to be part of my novels. Besides these book recommendations, I read numerous articles about Klan history. Everyone should learn this history.

Jeff's book list on the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Oregon and the USA

Jeff Stookey Why did Jeff love this book?

As a fiction writer trying to depict 1920s Portland, Oregon, I found limitless inspiration from this book. Chandler and Kennedy give the background leading up to Prohibition, chronicling the women’s temperance and suffrage movements; the establishment opposition to the International Workers of the World, the Wobblies; the organized crime in the city and police corruption; and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. When George Baker became mayor in 1917, he took advantage of all these elements to control a system of corruption that kept him in power. While the book does not focus on the KKK, it offers important details about its powerful influence on this particular city at this time in history.

By J D Chandler, Theresa Griffin Kennedy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The 1917 election of Mayor George Luis Baker ushered a long era of unscrupulous greed into Portland government. While supposedly enforcing prohibition laws, Baker ordered police chief Leon Jenkins to control and profit from the bootlegging market. Baker filled city coffers and his friends' pockets with booze-soaked cash while sensational headlines like the 1929 affair between policeman Bill Breuning and informant Anna Schrader scandalized the city. Maligned in the press, Schrader executed a bitter campaign to recall the mayor. In 1933, a hired gunman murdered special investigator to the governor Frank Aiken a day before he would have filed a…


Book cover of A Brief History of Fear and Intolerance in Tillamook County

Jeff Stookey Author Of Dangerous Medicine

From my list on the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Oregon and the USA.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I first moved to Portland, Oregon, I heard about the 1988 murder of an Ethiopian student by skinheads of the White Aryan Resistance. A famous trial subsequently bankrupted that white supremacist organization. When I began writing my trilogy, set in 1923, I learned about the strength of the Oregon KKK during the 1920s. I could see a direct line between the bigotry of that era and contemporary Portland. The more I studied the Klan of the 20s, the more I knew this information had to be part of my novels. Besides these book recommendations, I read numerous articles about Klan history. Everyone should learn this history.

Jeff's book list on the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Oregon and the USA

Jeff Stookey Why did Jeff love this book?

I love Hill’s passion for elucidating our history in order to combat prejudice. She approaches the origins of fear and intolerance from diverse perspectives, starting with violent clashes between 1700s explorers and indigenous peoples of Oregon’s Pacific coast. She describes the long history of stealing Oregon land from natives, and how the US Civil War contributed to the exclusion of African Americans from Oregon in its state constitution. Later she shows how D. W. Griffith’s movie The Birth of a Nation was instrumental in the re-emergence of the KKK in the 1920s, and WWI propaganda against Germans and fear of Bolshevism contributed to Klan hatred of immigrants. In later chapters Hill brings us up to the present summarizing anti-LGBTQ political initiatives and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Book cover of The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition

D.J. Mulloy Author Of Years of Rage: White Supremacy in the United States from the Klan to the Alt-Right

From my list on understanding the history of US white supremacy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a history professor, but I’m also a reader. I love books—fiction and nonfiction—that reveal a world, a character, an idea, or a political movement in ways that I didn’t previously fully understand. That make me see more deeply and think more clearly. I teach and write about the history of the United States, especially its history of radical or extreme political groups. Where did this interest come from? Well, I first visited the U.S. in 1980, when I was eleven years old, and truth be told, my fascination with the country and its people has not abated since.

D.J.'s book list on understanding the history of US white supremacy

D.J. Mulloy Why did D.J. love this book?

I always love it when a work of history connects with and helps me understand the present, and Linda Gordon’s book certainly does that.

Not only does she provide a riveting account of the revival of the Klan in the 1920s, she clearly demonstrates the tremendous impact the organization had on America during this period and long beyond, through its skillful use of demagoguery, its canny media strategy and its underlying politics of resentment.

By Linda Gordon,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Second Coming of the KKK as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Extraordinary national acclaim accompanied the publication of award-winning historian Linda Gordon's disturbing and markedly timely history of the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Dramatically challenging our preconceptions of the hooded Klansmen responsible for establishing a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South, this "second Klan" spread in states principally above the Mason-Dixon line by courting xenophobic fears surrounding the flood of immigrant "hordes" landing on American shores. "Part cautionary tale, part expose" (Washington Post), The Second Coming of the KKK "illuminates the surprising scope of the movement" (The New Yorker); the Klan attracted four-to-six-million members through secret…


Book cover of A Fever In The Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

Marianne Wesson Author Of A Death at Crooked Creek: The Case of the Cowboy, the Cigarmaker, and the Love Letter

From my list on characters behind famous legal proceedings.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a law professor, I always regretted one aspect of the severely edited case reports in the textbooks that I taught from. Eager to get to the main point— analyzing the law that would govern the decision—they seemed to give only the most cursory account of the interesting parts of the story: what happened, who made it happen, and whom did it happen to? I worried that students would take on board the implicit message that the people whose lives were entangled in the law didn’t matter much compared to the law’s lofty majesty. This list and my own book represent my protest against this mistaken idea.

Marianne's book list on characters behind famous legal proceedings

Marianne Wesson Why did Marianne love this 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 recognition along with reasons to hope. Its motifs are men who believe that they are above the law, the ease of recruiting respectable citizens into a cult, and the difficulty women have being believed.

By Timothy Egan,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked A Fever In The Heartland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time." —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile

“Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of…


Book cover of One Small Town, One Crazy Coach: The Ireland Spuds and the 1963 Indiana High School Basketball Season

Matthew A. Werner Author Of Season of Upsets: Farm boys, city kids, Hoosier basketball and the dawn of the 1950s

From my list on more than just sports books.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a storyteller and jack of all trades who grew up on a family farm in Indiana. I can operate a combine, analyze data, or edit a book. Writing about sports can create great stories, but the true beauty lies in the people and circumstances, not the stats and game highlights. Most of my works are nonfiction—personal interest, sports, history, and sports history. I enjoy unearthing untold stories, especially when they involve equal rights, underdogs, hidden history, and non-famous people. Everyone has a story to tell.

Matthew's book list on more than just sports books

Matthew A. Werner Why did Matthew love this book?

Mike Roos did a great job telling this true story of Indiana high school basketball. Roos’s father was the high school principal that hired that crazy coach referenced in the title. He used extensive interviews and years of rewrites to recreate meetings, locker room pep talks, and dialogue. Not only is this a good story, but Roos showed readers what is wonderful about creative nonfiction. It reads like a novel, but it’s genuine nonfiction.

By Mike Roos,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked One Small Town, One Crazy Coach as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the summer of 1962, the peripatetic and irrepressible Pete Gill was hired on a whim to coach basketball at tiny Ireland High School. There he would accomplish, against enormous odds, one of the great small-town feats in Indiana basketball history. With no starters taller than 5'10", few wins were predicted for the Spuds. Yet, after inflicting brutal preseason conditioning, employing a variety of unconventional motivational tactics, and overcoming fierce opposition, Gill molded the Spuds into a winning team that brought home the town's first and only sectional and regional titles. Relying on narrative strategies of creative nonfiction rather than…


Book cover of A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers

Alex Squadron Author Of Life in the G: Minor League Basketball and the Relentless Pursuit of the NBA

From my list on engrossing sports books that take you behind the scenes.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was introduced to sports, specifically basketball, at a very young age and have been obsessed ever since. My first dream was to make it to the NBA, but I realized fairly early on that 1) I’m of average height, which means I’m very small for basketball, and, more importantly, 2) I’m not good enough to play in the NBA. So, I pivoted to writing and have been extremely fortunate to carve out a career that combines my two greatest passions. I’ve worked for SLAM Magazine, Sports Illustrated, the New York Post, and the NBA. I don’t know much, but I know sports books. Really hope you enjoy these!

Alex's book list on engrossing sports books that take you behind the scenes

Alex Squadron Why did Alex love this book?

This book is what happens when you give an incredible writer incredible access to an incredible subject.

The late Bob Knight allowed John Feinstein to essentially join his team, the Indiana Hoosiers, for the 1985-86 season, and the result is a deeply compelling and extremely engaging profile of the legendary coach, whose style was… unorthodox, to say the least.

I could not recommend it more. 

By John Feinstein,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Season on the Brink as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Decades after it spent weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, A Season on the Brink remains the most celebrated basketball book ever written—an unforgettable chronicle of his year spent following the Indiana Hoosiers and their fiery coach Bob Knight.

Granted unprecedented access to legendary coach Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers during the 1985–86 season, John Feinstein saw and heard it all—practices, team meetings, strategy sessions, and midgame huddles—as the team worked to return to championship form. The result is an unforgettable chronicle that not only captures the drama and pressure of big-time college basketball but…


Book cover of A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana

Ann Aikens Author Of A Young Woman's Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale

From my list on funniest memoirs with advice for a happy life.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raised when unsupervised kids roamed freely in the woods, my friends and I became adept at finding fun. My 20s were spent in New York in the 1980's zeitgeist of exploration and excess. A lifelong fan of comedy, I worked at the Comedy Cellar, where I booked and watched countless standup comics. Later, I left NYC’s glamor for Vermont’s nature. Since then, my Vermont newspaper column, "Upper Valley Girl," has amused and astonished (and possibly appalled) readers with humor and candor. Ever adventurous to the point of risk, making awful mistakes, and enduring impossible people, I learned limits the hard way. I advise young people not to do the same. 

Ann's book list on funniest memoirs with advice for a happy life

Ann Aikens Why did Ann love this book?

A captivating memoir that I could not put down. The mesmerizing cover! The story of a happy child growing up in a happy family in the Midwest that is somehow riveting! I was hooked from the get-go.

As someone who used to book comics in NYC, I admire anyone who can do brilliant clean humor. I wouldn’t call her a humor writer. She’s just a fantastic writer. I do not re-read books, but I do re-read this gem to feel sane and awed and to laugh. It reminds me of simpler times and that there are good, genuine people in this messy world.

By Haven Kimmel,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Girl Named Zippy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965 in Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period--people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.

To three-year-old Zippy, it made perfect sense to strike a bargain with her father to keep…


Book cover of Raintree County

William Illsey Atkinson Author Of Sun's Strong Immortality

From my list on well-written slam-bang adventures.

Why am I passionate about this?

I had a rotten childhood. Stuck in bed with asthma, I couldn’t do sports; but I could roam space and time with books, especially science fiction. Yet when I tried to re-read my beloved sci-fi titles as an adult, I got a shock. The books with sound science had terrible writing; the well-written books were full of scientific schlock. I realized that if I wanted sci-fi that was both technically astute and rewarding to read, I’d have to write it myself. And so I did.

William's book list on well-written slam-bang adventures

William Illsey Atkinson Why did William love this book?

My friends and I discovered Raintree County as undergrads, and found in it everything that matters – history, character, politics, and above all action. Here is life with all its pleasure and horror, apostasy and faith, sacrifice and victory. Here too is the core of American democracy, its glories and fiascos: a love letter to the Republic, more than ever relevant in the factional bitterness of today. An unforgettable novel from a man who killed himself at 34.

By Ross Lockridge,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Raintree County as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Throughout a single day in 1892, John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his life—from the love affairs of his youth in Indiana, to the battles of the Civil War, to the politics of the Gilded Age, to his homecoming as schoolteacher, husband, and father. Shawnessy is the epitome of the place and period in which he lives, a rural land of springlike women, shady gamblers, wandering vagabonds, and soapbox orators. Yet here on the banks of the Shawmucky River, which weaves its primitive course through Raintree County, Indiana, he also feels and obeys ancient rhythms. A number-one bestseller when…


Book cover of Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter

C. Lee McKenzie Author Of Sign of the Green Dragon

From my list on middle grade stories for adventure lovers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been hooked on adventure stories since I started reading. When I became serious about writing for young readers, I couldn’t resist creating fearless kids out to tackle. Indiana Jones-sized dangers. While I love writing these kinds of stories, I can’t resist reading them either. If there’s an added element of magic or sci-fi time-travel, I have to find out what happens and how. The most fun is to read these stories aloud to the young readers in my family in hopes they’ll also fall in love with adventure/fantasy—maybe one of them will even write a few of these books. That would be fabulous.

C.'s book list on middle grade stories for adventure lovers

C. Lee McKenzie Why did C. love this book?

I loved the young female Indiana Jones character in this book, and it’s a great read for adventure-seeking readers between eight and twelve whether they are boys or girls. The story is fast-paced and intriguing. I got caught up in this one and I’m not a middle-grade-age reader.

By Beth McMullen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 9, 10, 11, and 12.

What is this book about?

Indiana Jones meets The Lost Property Office in this action-packed mystery about a young girl searching for her father from the author of Mrs. Smith's Spy School for Girls-the first in a new series!

Having a world-traversing archaeologist dad means twelve-year-old Lola Benko is used to moving around and not putting down roots anywhere. But every day and every hunt for something hidden is an adventure, and no matter what, she and her dad are an unbeatable team.

Then her father disappears. The official story is that he was caught in a flash flood, but Lola's research shows the day…


Book cover of Inside the Klavern, the Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s
Book cover of Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland: Sex, Vice & Misdeeds in Mayor Baker's Reign
Book cover of A Brief History of Fear and Intolerance in Tillamook County

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Interested in Indiana, Ku Klux Klan, and Oregon?

Indiana 39 books
Ku Klux Klan 23 books
Oregon 72 books