They Call Themselves the Kkk: Book Review

Title: They Called Themselves The KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group

Author: Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Number of Pages: 168

W. Somerset Maugham once said "There are three rules for writing a good book. Unfortunately no one knows what they are." After reading my book however, I have come up with three "rules for a good book" all of which my book excelled at following. The first rule is that it must be able to draw and hold my attention, the second that I must gain useful or interesting knowledge and the third being that it be on my reading level. It is my opinion that any book that follows all three of these rules is considered a "good book".

As I read a book, or text of any kind for that matter, it helps me to enjoy it if the author is able to catch and hold my attention. The average human's attention last ten minutes and must be regained after that, which is why it is imperative that a book be interesting to read. The information or story in book must be presented in a way that grabs my attention and holds it so as to prevent me from getting bored and losing focus, otherwise I will not even be able to comprehend the text and will have to try to read it again. I have had many disappointments where I would find a book with an interesting premise and excitedly begin reading it only to become jaded shortly into it because the author failed to grab my attention. An effective way of doing this is to make the reader feel intense emotions such as fear, suspense or sympathy. They Called Themselves The KKK was able to keep my attention effectively by giving tragic real-life profiles of people who were terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan causing me to experience passionate feelings of sympathy. An example of such was the story of George Taylor, a former slave who "didn't know his exact age...didn't have land, a house, or money but burned with desire to improve himself and his young wife in Colbert County, Alabama." (78). After many years, George Taylor was proud to have been able to achieve success as a farmer, however his pride was short-lived as soon afterwards he was attacked by a gang of Ku Klux Klan members who savagely beat and "gave him three days to leave the county. If he didn't... they would return and 'put him up,' or hang him" (82). The emotional stimulation from reading this story and others like it was effectively able to keep my attention on the book. Another way the book would grab my attention would be by placing political cartoons and other media from the time in the books such as a cartoon of a black man seeking to help a white southerner out of a raging river however being scornfully rejected by him, this was able to visually grab my attention and give a metaphor for the position that the white