Book description
" Thomas Dixon is perhaps best known as the author of the
best-selling early twentieth-century Klan trilogy that included the
novel The Clansman (1905), which provided the core narrative for D. W.
Griffith's groundbreaking and still controversial film The Birth of a
Nation (1915). In his twenty-eighth and last novel, The Flaming Sword
(1939), Dixon takes to task his long-standing black critics,
especially W. E.B. DuBois, by attacking what he considered to be a
vast conspiracy by blacks and Communists to destroy America. A new
introduction and detailed notes by John David Smith offer a valuable
historical and critical perspective on this important and divisive
classic of American literature. Thomas Dixon (1864-1946) was born in
Shelby, North Carolina. He is the author of The Clansman and The Sins
of the Father.
"The eminent historian John David Smith, author and editor of
so many books treating race, white supremacy, and African American
history and biography, is the ideal person to introduce Dixon's last
novel for twenty-first century readers." -- Steven Weisenberger,
Southern Methodist University
