Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi

Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., and Fiffer follow up their bestselling collaboration, A Season for Justice , with this brisk, lucid, dramatic account of Dees's latest news-making case. After several skinheads fatally beat Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw in Portland, Ore., in 1988, Dees seized the opportunity to expose the hate group he suspected was behind the killers--the White Aryan Resistance (WAR)--as he had done earlier with a Ku Klux Klan-supported murder. Suing WAR and leader Tom Metzger, Dees and colleagues found a WAR lieutenant willing to testify that Metzger encouraged the violence, and thus to support the suit under Oregon laws regarding liability for acts of others. (One skinhead had already pleaded guilty in the criminal case.) The trial had dicey moments, as jurors found the white supremacist charismatic, but Dees's evidence and deft rhetoric won a $12.5 million judgment, now under appeal, against WAR and Metzger for Seraw's family. Although the book is self-serving, the authors responsibly address the free speech concerns the case raised. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Feb.)