PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... taut and riveting ... provides a sobering view of white-supremacist politics ... Mr. Mitchell’s accounts of the trials, and of the investigative reporting that led up to them, are fascinating. Yet one wishes at times that he had put more of himself into the story. We catch only glimpses, for example, of the toll that his single-minded devotion to this dangerous work took on his marriage and family ... More personal reflection might have also helped answer the most fascinating question at the center of Mr. Mitchell’s remarkable career: How did he, time after time, get these former Klansmen to open up to him?
Charles Lane
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal\"... a lively and well-researched account of Whitley’s checkered career and the surprising early years of the Secret Service ... Mr. Lane... has a gift for storytelling. But he allows his narrative to get bogged down in the morass of Gilded Age corruption, as when he discusses Whitley’s involvement in a convoluted conspiracy to frame a top White House aide’s political opponent ... But Mr. Lane doesn’t miss the real story, which was how the covert campaign against the Klan came to be forgotten by future generations.\
Richard Gergel
MixedThe Wall Street JournalWith his judicial expertise, the author provides important insight into the legal and political calculations that were behind the federal prosecution of Woodard’s main attacker, Batesburg police chief Lynwood Shull ... The problem for Mr. Gergel, however, is that the single incident of Isaac Woodard’s blinding, as horrific as it was, can’t sustain the weight his narrative asks it to bear. Both Truman and Waring’s evolutions on racial issues were determined by a number of influences ... the politics of the day complicate any discussion of Truman’s \'awakening.\' His civil-rights actions can’t be separated from his 1948 campaign strategy ... Waring’s situation was no less complex.
