Bartoletti is a well respected writer of historical non-fiction for tweens and teens. Previously, she has looked a the Hitler Youth, winning a Newbery Honor for it, the Irish Potato Famin, coal mining, and child labor. Her Newest book, is a strong study of the Ku Klux Klan. Using all sorts of primary documents such as newspaper clippings, poliical cartoons, slave narratives, and photographs to flesh out the events of the time period on which she is focusing.

The book brings readers through a history of the Ku Klux Klan. Bartoletti starts by introducing the facts about American slavery, the Civil War and the ensuing Reconstruction Era. She utilizes these details to introduce the environment in which Southern folks started to form the KKK, which started a small social group created by six men living in Pulaski, Tennessee. She then tracks the development of the organization as it ebbed and flowed in membership through the years. This includes information about the organization was governed, the acts members committed, and how the American and state governments responded.

Bartoletti has done an amazing of presenting the facts of what happened over the years, and allowed the information from the primary documents representing both Klan members and African Americans to tell the story. She made clear in the Introduction that she was not going to censor the content, and she doesn't in any way, but she does present the events in a way that the true horror of what happened is evident without being overwhelming for the reader.

This really is a must read for those looking to have a better understanding of the history of civil rights and the Antebellum period.