{"product_id":"life-of-a-klansman","title":"Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e*** This book is remaindered. Remaindered books normally are marked on the edge to show they have been discounted. ***\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\"A haunting tapestry of interwoven stories that inform us not just about our past but about the resentment-bred demons that are all too present in our society today . . . The interconnected strands of race and history give Ball’s entrancing stories a Faulknerian resonance.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eWalter Isaacson, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e Book Review\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA 2020 NPR staff pick | One of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e' thirteen books to watch for in August | One of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e's ten books to read in August | A \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eLiterary Hub \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003ebest book of the summer| One of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/em\u003e'\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e sixteen best books to read in August\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe life and times of a militant white supremacist, written by one of his offspring, National Book Award–winner Edward Ball\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e tells the story of a warrior in the Ku Klux Klan, a carpenter in Louisiana who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the years after the Civil War. Edward Ball, a descendant of the Klansman, paints a portrait of his family’s anti-black militant that is part history, part memoir rich in personal detail.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSifting through family lore about “our Klansman” as well as public and private records, Ball reconstructs the story of his great-great grandfather, Constant Lecorgne. A white French Creole, father of five, and working class ship carpenter, Lecorgne had a career in white terror of notable and bloody completeness: massacres, night riding, masked marches, street rampages―all part of a tireless effort that he and other Klansmen made to restore white power when it was threatened by the emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans. To offer a non-white view of the Ku-klux, Ball seeks out descendants of African Americans who were once victimized by “our Klansman” and his comrades, and shares their stories.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor whites, to have a Klansman in the family tree is no rare thing: Demographic estimates suggest that fifty percent of whites in the United States have at least one ancestor who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan at some point in its history. That is, one-half of white Americans could write a Klan family memoir, if they wished\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003e.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn an era when racist ideology and violence are again loose in the public square, \u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e offers a personal origin story of white supremacy. Ball’s family memoir traces the vines that have grown from militant roots in the Old South into the bitter fruit of the present, when whiteness is again a cause that can veer into hate and domestic terror.\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch5\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat People Are Saying\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h5\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"a-section a-spacing-small a-padding-small\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Taking the reader along with him on a journey of discovery as he teases out facts, [Edward Ball] engages in speculation and shares his emotions about the sad saga of Constant Lecorgne, an unsuccessful carpenter and embittered racist who was a great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side. The result is a haunting tapestry of interwoven stories that inform us not just about our past but about the resentment-bred demons that are all too present in our society today.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Walter Isaacson, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e] is brave, revealing and intimate, as well as an exploration of how one family’s morally complicated past echoes down to the present. This is a story for our cultural moment, as Americans begin to engage with and acknowledge the ways that white supremacy endures in our society . . . Ball is movingly philosophical about what responsibility his generation holds for the sins of its fathers.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―W. Ralph Eubanks, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ball’s use of the historical present not only illuminates a Klansman’s thinking but lends an immediacy to the writing . . . Ball writes with great sensitivity about the black victims of appalling atrocities such as the massacre in New Orleans on July 30, 1866 . . . Ball’s writing is suffused with a generosity of spirit; it has an unusually clear-eyed and quiet quality that often defies the tumult that it is depicting. His humility is palpable as he searches for and interviews descendants of some of those injured or killed in the atrocities that Constant likely took part in.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Colin Grant, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ball tells his story with curiosity, disgust, and a sweeping lamp of novelistic imagination, making his tale all the chillier for being so intimate, so intensely realized . . . This is an important work of America’s collective history―one whose ghosts are most undead.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eJohn Freeman, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eLiterary Hub\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In writing a microhistory about [his great-great-grandfather], [Ball] builds a psychological portrait of white supremacy, which then radiates outward and across time, to explain the motives and historical background behind racist violence . . . Ball offers a particularly piercing psychoanalytic reading of the present, even though his subject is the past.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Josephine Livingstone, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Captivating . . . An intimate origin story of the white-supremacist movement . . . [Edward Ball] reconstructs his ancestor’s world and moral insight in a work of novelistic expansiveness . . . Ball refuses to ‘disown’ the past, believing it crucial for white Americans to acknowledge that ‘marauders like Constant are our people, and they fight for us.’ Accordingly, he approaches his ancestor’s story with shame, but also sympathy and imagination.” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Julian Lucas, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eHarper's \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Edward Ball’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is filled with life stories that could have come from William Faulkner’s pen.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Nathan M. Greenfield, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ball’s direct but nimble prose cuts the contours of Constant Lecorgne’s life and grapples simultaneously with the coherent outline and structure that whiteness imposes . . . Though he claims \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is an investigation of his matrilineal ancestor, Ball has engineered another kind of coup: a public reckoning with white supremacy . . . Ball’s book is about the postbellum US and the US in 2020; it’s looking both directions at once.” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Walton Muyumba, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Boston Globe \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In [our] severe but potentially transformative times, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e implicitly asks how White Americans can meaningfully confront their relationship to enduring white supremacy, whether they are directly tied to enslavers or terrorists, as Ball is, or linked less detectably by reaping the inescapable benefits of a deeply embedded racial privilege that is slavery’s lasting consequence . . . Ball succeeds in the delicate task of conveying empathy for Lecorgne while expressing his utter repulsion . . . \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is valuable as a self-searching profile of ancestral atrocity.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Erik Gleibermann, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e] is a book designed to discomfort its reader . . . Society could view [Klansmen] as though through the wrong end of a telescope: they were tiny, and far away. Ball, though, refuses to allow his readers that distance . . . All of which makes [his] eventual point so much more powerful.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Matthew Teague, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is a story of horrors, albeit of a tragically widespread kind . . . The brazenness of these crimes, which included mass murder and treason, and their perpetrators’ more or less complete impunity, cannot fail to shock even readers familiar with the period . . . [Lecorgne] is a looming spectre in a book that is really a portrait of his time.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Provocative and painful . . . What emerges is a harrowing reckoning with one family's past, as well as a nation's past in miniature.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Susan Larson, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Times-Picayune\/The New Orleans Advocate\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Cinematic . . . Far less common than white supremacy is the willingness of its successors to explore their connections to it. Ball’s family memoir runs counter to the tendency to disavow the unsettling history of whiteness while maintaining its attendant privileges . . . \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eis an absorbing record of the hardening of racial categories and the inner workings of white supremacy . . . Perhaps Ball’s greatest success in this book is his utilization of family biography and historical events to examine whiteness as a construct.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Andru Okun, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003e64 Parishes\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Through exquisite research and with the help of a file maintained by a schoolteacher aunt, Ball has managed to re-create the life and times of Polycarp Constant Lecorgne (1832-86), a New Orleans ship’s carpenter and the author’s great-great-grandfather, who was a Confederate soldier and a devoted white militant supremacist during Reconstruction . . . Here he meticulously describes a Confederate ancestor’s role in helping to re-establish white supremacy in Louisiana after slavery’s abolition . . . Ball sifts through the uncertainties, fills in gaps using inference and implication, and successfully renders a disturbing story of a Klansman.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Joseph Barbato, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eStar Tribune \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e(Minneapolis)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[A] resonant tale . . . [and] a self-searching meditation . . . An illuminating contribution to the literature of race and racism in America.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eKirkus Reviews \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A violent legacy stirs a deep meditation on the nature of racism in this anguished study of Civil War–era New Orleans . . . [Edward Ball] vividly reconstructs the mindset that propelled [his great-great-grandfather]―a resentful, working-class striver nostalgic for his family’s formerly privileged position atop New Orleans’ complex racial hierarchy―into racist activism . . . The result is a clear-eyed work of historical reclamation and an intimate, self-lacerating take on memory and collective responsibility.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The author of the National Book Award–winning \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eSlaves in the Family\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e returns with a powerful, horrifying history of a family and a nation . . . Ball assembles a compelling, nuanced story . . . [\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e] is sober, dominated by a deep sense of shame and outrage, and intentionally disquieting. It won't be a comfortable reading experience, and it's not meant to be, but it’s a necessary one.” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Margaret Quamme, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eBooklist \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Spanning most of the 19th century, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a nuanced case study of one cog within a machine of terrorism and oppression . . . [a] nuanced biography . . . In flexing his imagination, Ball creates a dynamic space for challenging reconciliation, breaking from the narrative periodically to reflect with empathy for family members acting in ways he abhors, yet never absolving them.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eShelf Awareness \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e(starred review)\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"There is no other writer of nonfiction about race writing today who has taken us deeper into our greatest national and familial dilemma than Edward Ball. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a deeply personal history, a brave work, and a lodestar for how we have arrived at yet another reckoning about white supremacy. Ball demonstrates here, for all who wish to try, just how to face, narrate, and understand our past even when we find ancestors and stories we might wish away. In his work, he allows for no looking away, and he does so in lyrical prose.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eFrederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In this compelling narrative of the life of a klansman, Edward Ball reckons with the history of whiteness that has shaped the U.S. and which is his personal inheritance. Ball confronts the violence and hatred at the foundation of white authority and privilege by recounting his great-great-grandfather’s worldview and acts of brutality. It is easy to recoil from the ugliness documented in these pages; much more difficult is the task of acknowledging that murder and terror are the bedrock of the nation. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of A Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a must-read, now more than ever.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eSaidiya Hartman, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eWayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If you are a white American, Edward Ball calculates, the odds that you have a Klansman in your family tree are one in two. In this singular work of imaginative reconstruction, Ball brings his own family's Klansman out of the closet and into the light. With a detective’s tenacity, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of a Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e personalizes the terror of white supremacy as it builds toward a crescendo that sears the soul.” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eNancy MacLean, William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor at Duke University and author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eDemocracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e and \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eBehind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Edward Ball’s fascinating \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eLife of A Klansman\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e escapes genres. His art combines imagination and history to tell the story of the sometimes brutal, often mundane, life of his ancestor, a New Orleans carpenter who became 'our klansman.' Delicately balancing empathy and disgust, he examines the chokehold whiteness and white supremacy have fastened on public memory.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e―Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University and author of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Republic for Which It Stands\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ch5\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h5\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"a-section a-spacing-small a-padding-small\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eEdward Ball\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e' is the author of several nonfiction books, including \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Inventor and the Tycoon\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, about the birth of moving pictures in California, and \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eSlaves in the Family\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, an account of his family’s history as slaveholders in South Carolina, which received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has taught at Yale University and has been awarded fellowships by the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center. He is also the recipient of a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Picador","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44554878779485,"sku":"9781250798619","price":13.5,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0562\/0826\/1213\/files\/9781250798619.jpg?v=1782749215","url":"https:\/\/leftwingbooks.net\/products\/life-of-a-klansman","provider":"Leftwingbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}