It was all too easy for a Yankee like me who grew up during the Civil Rights struggles to be smug about who lived on which side of the Mason-Dixon line and who as such was more "enlightened" on the issue of race. Particularly raised as I was by a father who called people like Huie's characters "Rebs". It was another thing entirely to be told later in life by an African-American friend of Alabama roots (where this book is set) that she'd rather live down there than up here in western New York--white people of her home state were less "two-faced" (her words) about the race issue than we were up here. This book was the first book I ever read that puts a human face on people connected with the Ku Klux Klan. In recent years, I've come to realize that the Klan gave America our earliest experience with terrorism. From right here at home, not foreign shores. But "The Klansman" presents all of its characters on both sides of the issue as people with real feelings. A bit disconcerting for a kid like me who had a good guy/ bad guy perspective from popular entertainment, which is to say the bad guys are monsters, not people. But then again, Nietzsche once suggested that life's most valuable lessons are anything but easy. This book's anti-hero is Sheriff "Big Track" Bascomb, a complicated sort of guy who on one side is a Bull Connoresque uniformed soldier for the cause of segregation, but on the other side is a caring husband and father. His teenage son Allen is an embyonic New Southerner whose generation today is in power in states like Alabama. His wife Maybelle doesn't care so much about political issues as she does about the well-being of her family. His best friend is landowner Breck Stancill, whose family traditions lie in the anti-segregationist direction, but in truth, Stancill is a helper of the needy regardless of race. In leaner years, Big Track himself was a beneficiary of that, and is torn between his loyalties to the segregationist cause and his more personal feelings of obligation and gratitude to Stancill, who by his own admission has served as a surrogate older brother to him. Military historian Gwynne Dyer once said that the only way to make a fighting man out of a civilian brought up to believe that it's wrong to kill people is to suggest that the enemy aren't really people. To this day I retain my hostility to racism, but Huie has created a cast of racists here that I can't with any conscience claim aren't real people. Actually, I'm a bit surprised that this book is even available used. After all, not every book that deals with a hot button issue of a particular era can cross the gulf of time into status as a "historical novel". Maybe Huie is no John Jakes, but Churchill did say that if you don't learn from history you'll end up repeating it.

Huie, now deceased, writes a very exciting novel about a Klan-ridden Alabama community during the timeframe of the civil rights movement. I haven't ever been to Alabama, so I can't honestly say whether or not it was at all reflective of small-town situations in that state during the late 1960s. However, the picture it paints is not terribly dissimilar from those I've seen in non-fiction writing about the period.

The language is harsh and the scenes are described with shocking vividness; this book isn't for the faint of heart and contains a lot more sorrrow than joy. Such were the times. However, it does present a wide cross-section of interesting characters, and avoids painting a picture of complete good vs. complete evil--just about all the characters display faults and redeeming qualities, rather than a cast of nothing but saintly, unselfish civil rights workers or hog-nosed adder-mean racists. It doesn't take deep reading of this book to see how racial prejudice is often manipulated as a power tool.

If you can find a copy, and you're interested in the topic, don't let it get away.

What makes this book interesting is that it was written between the murders and the trial. Huie knew who the murderers were, how they did it, and never expected a guilty verdict.

The book introduces you in detail to Michael (Mickey) Schwerener and all the details leading up to his murder. This detail will help you understand exactly why and how these murders took place.

This latest edition includes updates by the author to compare his early speculation against the results of the trial.

Read this in the 50's in Australia. Always seemed to me to be a great american story, unjustifiably neglected. A most human tale, probably truer than false. Mamie a triumph in adversity, kindness of one who could have been just a user of people who chose to hold out a helping hand. Yes, I would love to obtain a copy so my wife could enjoy it in these less prudish times. A great human story.

I read this book in 1955 while I was working in a Steel Mill in Warren, Ohio. I could see then that I would never be rich earning $16.00 a day after what the "elite" of Hawaii was earning just prior to and during World War II. I agree with the reviewer from Charlotte, N.C., don't know why but I never forgot the book. (NOTE) I believe a movie staring Richard Eagen and Jane Russell was also made in the 1950's however, it did not "tell" as much as the book. I would be interested in obtaining a copy of the book...new or used...

The Revolt of Mamie Stover is the real history of Hawaii. It should have been named "Islands in the Stream". It describes how Hawaii was always stratically located during the wars and skirmishes in the Pacific. It describes how the citizens aquired what is now the Old Money. The elite in Hawaii would just as soon not see this book in print again. It has been a long time since I read the book, but it has always been in my memory.

As a son of a submariner from WWII, I grew up hearing all the navy stories and meeting the naval pals of my father. This garnered me a more than casual interest in things Naval regarding WWII. I also grew up with the John Wayne version of the Seabees. I like Huie's version better. Written during the war, it carries all the flavors of patriotism it was written to impart to the American public. I found it a "page turner" once I got past the first few preliminary chapters as he was setting the story line us. Well worth the money. I am looking forward to reading his sequel: From Omaha to Okinawa.

This book is surprisingly interesting and contains a bunch of good "first person" stories complete with unique and numerous photos. The atmosphere is real WWII since the book was written in 1943. Makes you want to find out what happened next.

i served in the 1st special construction and steverdoring batt. on the canal guadacanal and made 2 trips and ended in sasebo in sept of 45 as soon as the peace treaty was signed. this book has pictures and stories by the men who were there. book was a job well done

For what this book is, it is certainly the best written of its kind. What is it? A perfect example of there's no such a thing as a bad boy, society is to blame, who can define duty or patriotism, we are all responsible but the criminal, liberalism.... in other words, a mix of Father Flanigan and George McGovern. Yet it is sharply written, if not reasoned, and makes for a compelling story. Slovik certainly wasn't a duty, honor, country sort of fellow. He was a petty criminal--more a follower and delinquent than anything--who spent four years, as an adult, in a Michigan reformatory. He avoided recidivism upon his release, marrying, holding steady jobs, and enjoyng his 4-F status. Then came the barrel-scraping; the need for replacements outweighing previous standards; so Slovik was drafted. And then the whining begins. Reading Sloviks letters to his wife, one is struck by the self-pity. His whimpering is such that I believe Mother Theresa would have wished to slap him. His letters make Bill Clinton seem another Audie Murphy or Joe Foss. He arrived in France in the summer of 1944 and immediately "got lost." When he finally caught up with his unit--six WEEKS later--he informed his CO that he would desert if put on the line--and desert he did. As jail had once been a comfort for him, the stockade seemed preferable to duty, he turned himself in the next day, writing the confession that almost made his execution a certainty. In it he admitted to cowardice and added in bold print "I'LL RUN AWAY AGAIN." An officer offered to tear up the confession if Slovik would go on the line. He refused. Yes, he was the only soldier executed for desertion since 1864, and yes, there may have been more egregious examples of cowardice, but Slovik took the decisions that led to his fate. And he whined all the way.

I found this a well-told account of the only soldier executed by the U.S. in World War Two. I am sure there were men more deserving of execution than Private Slovik. It is another illustration of the wrongness of capital punishment

I saw the James Garner movie first, and was so impressed by it I
looked up the novel. I think the movie might be a little better,
but the book is definitely worth reading. It's not very long and actually can be read in one sitting. It's funny, sometimes obscene, sometimes cynical, wise, and realistic. The main character is a "dog robber" during World World II; he is a general's aide, and is supposed to get the general everything he wants. Hence, he supposedly would rob everyone he could, including dogs. He is a detached and somewhat cynical man, who, while stationed in England, meets and falls in love with the Emily of the title ("Americanization" is not such a noble thing; it refers to deprived English girls, made poor by the war, who do what they must to survive. This means attaching themselves to the much richer Americans.) Mostly the book is about war and love. It has a very cynical view of war and soldiering. It's message: only love can conquer the horrible. A book that is half comedy and half horror, but wholly entertaining.

I read this book on the recommendation of former Speaker of the House Jim Wright. While I found the prose heavy-handed, its appeal to young, politically aware people in the 1940's was apparent. Congressman Wright cited Huie's work as an important part of his education before he entered the Army Air Corp after Pearl Harbor. The human cost of government programs was being tallied at about this time, and the results as revealed in Mud on the Stars inspired men like the Congressman to make government work for people not become a burden. Whether Congressman Wright and his collegues achieved that balance is debatable, but his political motivation was clear.

The other subject of Mud on the Stars was racism, but a racism defined in multicolored, economic terms. That too was part of the education of the generation which fought a great war and eventually presided over the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1950's and '60s.

Huie drew on his experiences as a j! ! ournalist, particularly in the South, but his observations about government, corporations, and race were universal. For present, at least until I am proven wrong, I'd say it is timeless; well worth a quick reading.