cover image The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox

The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox

Stephen Budiansky, , read by Phil Cigante. . Brilliance Audio, $34.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-4233-5163-4

Budiansky has clearly done his research on this interesting and largely unknown history of the American South, detailing the origins of America's largest homegrown terrorist sect, the Ku Klux Klan. While the tales are often disturbing and naturally disquieting, they are important stories of real men that have waited decades to be told. Phil Gigante does his very best to insure they are given the appropriate respect they deserve. He offers a solid, unwavering reading that captures the raw brutality and extreme melancholy of the period of the South's reconstruction (1865–1876). Gigante's spellbinding narration is careful never to sound too sympathetic or editorialize, but presents the author's material in an unbiased and dispassionate voice, allowing the truth within to speak for itself. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 10). (Feb.)