"Steve Oney chronicles a still harrowing chapter in American history with the skill of an investigative journalist and the insight of a historian. In 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan's body was found bludgeoned, raped, murdered, and dumped in the basement of the Atlanta pencil factory where she worked. The Jewish, Cornell-educated Leo Frank was accused and convicted of the crime, but when his death sentence was commuted, a group of prominent Georgians kidnapped and lynched him. In narrating this grim episode, Oney sheds new light on the murders of both Phagan and Frank, and provides essential information on events that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan and led to the establishment of the Anti-Defamation League. "
