Customer Reviews

The Reconstruction Trilogy: The Leopard's Spots; The Clansman; The Traitor

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The epic that inspired the film classic Birth of a Nation! These three gripping historical novels on the beaten South's bitter "Reconstruction" years chronicle the birth of the first Ku Klux Klan; they helped give rise to the second. Published together for the first time in this magnificent volume are three classics: The Leopard's Spots, the story of Yankee oppression in the occupied South (1865-1900); The Clansman, on white resistance to tyranny and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan; and The Traitor, which traces the Klan's fall. Born of the author's own experience, the work captures all the poignancy of the tragic post-Civil War era in the South, and all the passion with which its despoiled and disenfranchised people rose up to reclaim their rights and safeguard their heritage. No popular work has addressed America's race problem with more searing frankness. You'll marvel at the parallels between the efforts in the 1860s and 1870s of money-hungry Yankee capitalists and earnest, misguided do-gooders to throttle white Southerners, and today's still-unfolding drama of American racial politics. Long out of print, now completely reset in a modern, easy to read typeface. A new preface by attorney Sam Dickson tells of the author's life and times, including his collaboration with famed director D. W. Griffith in the making of the enduring American film classic Birth of a Nation.

Severely flawed as fiction and as history, these novels are nonetheless important for understanding past and current racial relations in the United States. However, this particular edition by The Noontide Press is not the one to buy. The book is full of proofreading errors that make reading difficult, confusing, and frustrating. Errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation are abundant. Sometimes these errors get in the way of reading. For example, the reader will come upon a quotation mark but then start wondering who is talking. After some confusion, the reader might eventually realize that it's the narrator talking and the quotation mark was placed by mistake. In addition, errors in printing, such as misplaced line breaks, appear persistently. The most curious and annoying of these printing errors is the appearance of garbled "words" like "laborcolorhumorlaborneighbor." This edition might seem attractive because of its low price. However, I'd advise the reader to locate other editions of the novels. I'd also advise Noontide Press to hire competent copyediting staff, even if that means charging more for their books.

I have an original edition of this third part in the series. It blew away all of my preconceived notions about the Hhistorical Ku Klux klan. It is excellent! I am ordered it for a friend and recommend it to all!

Books like this that have so much factual history and insight into the sad events involved during a period that no one cares to face, are certainly hard to come by. I suppose that it might be controversial to a generation or two of proponents of propaganda elicited by those who can't stand the truth..There shoul be a copy in every school library.

Drop your preconcieved notions of the Klan's earliest days at the door. If only half of what Thomas Dixon records is true, who wouldn't have taken similar measures? It has been the same in every culture from Ireland to Israel. People will only withstand egregious oppression for so long. It is a shame the typical racist morons in the modern KKK are not like these guys. -Stonewall

Although Dixon's work are historically significant and should be inprint, this edition is problematic for two reasons. First, theediting is awful. Second, the introduction--from the 1980s--is written by a white supremacist arguing for the validity of Dixon's vision of a racially segregated America. With good online versions of two of two of these novels at UNC's "Documenting the American South" project, save yourself some money and avoid this edition.

As I note in another review, the intro to this edition is explicitly white supremacist. It's not a mistake that happened to slip by the (otherwise decent) folks at Noontide Press. The Press publishes exclusively whack-job conspiracy theories about how Jews/Blacks/the Illuminati/Elders of Zion/UN fetishists/Masonic wizards,etc. are secretly running the world that oppressed Nazis/Klansman/Christian Identitarians/etc. need to take back. Buying this edition puts money in these folks' pockets, so be advised.