About This Book

This timely, engaging book examines whiteness through controversial Confederate symbols and statues that have become a focal point in the national discussion about systemic racism and white supremacy. Producer of the podcast White Lies, O’Neill focuses on several statues and a building named after Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who looms large in Confederate lore, being the only person to enlist as a private and work his way to general. But Forrest also made his money as a slave trader and was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. O’Neill uses a literary-journalism style and gives voice to both sides of the argument, interviewing folks from the Black Lives Matter movement, Selma’s first black mayor, the Friends of Forrest, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Still, it's clear in both O'Neill's personal reckoning and his brief history of the monuments and their ties to white supremacy that he believes they are one of the many ways we keep “intact the things we want to believe about our country, our past, our present, ourselves."

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.