This book is over 800 pages, starting from the early U.S. oil companies competing with one another in an 1890's style industrial struggle. It has detail. If you like hard data this is the source. Daunted by the size of this tome? read the last three chapters first. "The Price of Oil", "The legitimate Greatness of The Company" and "The Conclusion": these three chapters will put the present day in a new light for you. The Caspian Sea was an oil field before the Bolschevik Revolution. At that time czarist Russia was a world contender. Now Caspian Sea oil has been "rediscovered". What was the Burma oil co.? What were the yearly production figures? what were the various allocations of oil use? What role were other countries playing? This is the place to find it.

This is a wonderful account of the beginnings of the Standard Oil Company - from the perspective of one of the premier muckracker's of the 19th century. The book is mainly a series of articles strung together detailing some of the more illegal efforts of John D. Rockefeller to create a monopoly in the oil industry. It is a classic account of how to create a monopoly and has stories that involve everything from dynamiting the competition to innovative rebate plans that discourage competition..

The book goes in length into the klan's expansion into many states and documents their success/failure and the general social reception of the community the klan was entering. The author though seems to have a pro-klan bias, and this is felt just by the title and the reading of the inside jacket. He rarely points out the evils of the klan ideology (through his use of words, especially omissions of such words as "racist" and "bigot", which many klan members seem to embody), and glamorizes the klans views on white supremacy as a normal, modern view of white christians (something very far from the truth). It glamorizes klan violence and threats of violence, and in more then a few places it accuses those against the klan as unpatriotic Americans, or ungrateful immigrants or minorities. Mr Chalmers also highlights community violence against klan activity as the real wrong and evil, something I think is a normal reaction to these "pseudo-chrisitan extremist police" who want time (and America) to stand still and unchanging for them. Some areas also hint towards the authors support for the klan's ideals. Seems like klan propaganda to me.... but a good reference none the less if you seek to journey into these dark waters. As a reference: 5 stars. I subtracted two for the author's pro-klan bias and (sometimes) unfair picture he paints....

In "Hooded Americanism," David M. Chalmers chronicles the history of the Ku Klu Klan in all of its incarnations, from immediately after the Civil War to the late 1970s. Mr. Chalmers also discusses the Klan's development and success (or lack of) in all of the states during its strongest period in the 1920s to 1930s. Mr. Chalmers also discusses in great detail the turbulent 1960s and how the Klan helped inadvertently brought about the Civil Rights legislation it fought so hard against. Exhaustively researched and well written, "Hooded Americanism" is a factual glimpse into the life of a controverisal organization and into the lives of the men and women who made it possible. Mr. Chalmers makes excellent use of contemporary newspaper accounts and editorials to paint the Klan and its standing in a given community. What I found especially intriguing was the Klan's demographics. Mr. Chalmers presents research that refutes long-held convictions that the Klan was always strongest in the South; in fact the Klan, at times, ruled the legal governments of the Midwest. Mr. Chalmers also discusses how various state legislatures and governors fought the Klan or sided with them. Again, I was surprised at how many governments actually tried to curb the growth of the Klan in their states through anti-mask laws and other legislation. This exploded notions I had that the Klan was unchallenged everywhere it went, especially in the 1920s. Mr. Chalmers has written an excellent history that encompasses in great detail the 100 years following the Civil War. I hope that he is at work on updating this important work. Highly recommended.