This is a tough one to review because A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND is a masterpiece of nonfiction about the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s. But it contains some implications, which the author, Timothy Egan, has discussed a bit during author appearances I have listened to online, that are a stretch.

No one can doubt the facts Egan writes about. Everything really did happen; it is well documented.

D.C. Stephenson rose to power in the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s in Indiana, where most of the population was white and protestant, the Ku Klux Klan ideal. He was a smooth talker, but he was also a monster.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND notes several stories of people who tried to take down the Ku Klux Klan. But no one did. Than Madge Oberholtzer finally got them with her deathbed testimony of her nightmare experience with Stevenson and his thugs. After that, the Ku Klux Klan, most notably in Indiana, all but disappeared.

Egan's writing is superb, and the story is unputdownable. But, although it is true that history repeats itself and that we should learn from history, Egan implies that some of the history of the Ku Klux Klan, such as hatred of immigrants, is happening again today. I take issue with that. What Is happening today is resentment, not hatred, of people who illegally rush into this country. That is not hatred of immigrants.

So much of this history I didn't know, and maybe you didn't know either. I urge you to pick it up. It might make you feel smarter.