Charlottesville

In August 2017, more than a thousand neo-Nazis, fascists, Klansmen and neo-Confederates came to a small southern city to protest the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Within an hour of their arrival, the historic downtown was in chaos as armored far-right groups fought activists in the streets. Before the weekend ended, a neo-Nazi drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a young woman and injuring dozens.

Deborah Baker, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, gives a gripping, wide-angle account of that weekend. She pays less attention to the rally's far-right leaders than to the city itself. University, local and state officials, including the police, could not or would not grasp the growing threat. Clergy, activists and organizers from many walks of life saw what was coming more clearly and, at great personal risk, worked to warn and protect their community.

To understand why those warnings went unheard, Baker digs deep into American history. Her research turns up a strikingly similar episode from decades earlier, when an emissary of the poet and fascist Ezra Pound came to Charlottesville intending to start a race war. The book shows how a city better known for Thomas Jefferson than for unrest became a flashpoint in a continuing struggle over the nation's founding myths.