Product Description

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

The events surrounding the 1913 murder of the young Atlanta factory worker Mary Phagan and the subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, the transplanted northern Jew who was her employer and accused killer, were so wide ranging and tumultuous that they prompted both the founding of B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The Leo Frank Case was the first comprehensive account of not only Phagan's murder and Frank's trial and lynching but also the sensational newspaper coverage, popular hysteria, and legal demagoguery that surrounded these events.

Forty years after the book first appeared, and more than ninety years after the deaths of Phagan and Frank, it remains a gripping account of injustice. In his preface to the revised edition, Leonard Dinnerstein discusses the ongoing cultural impact of the Frank affair. This edition includes for the first time letters written by Jim Conley. The state's main witness against Frank, Conley would in later years come to be regarded by many as the actual killer of Mary Phagan. The letters shed light on his thought processes, interests, and preoccupations.

Dinnerstein's analysis should interest students of southern history, anti-Semitism, civil liberties and social change.

--American Quarterly

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #484610 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A professor of American history at the Univ. of Arizona, Dinnerstein investigates the brutal lynching of Leo Max Frank, who was accused of the 1913 murder of a 13-year-old girl in Atlanta. PW called this a "crisp report."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
The author's thorough research, his careful organization of the findings, his cautious and dispassionate appraisal presented in lean and readable prose, all combine to inspire confidence that historians now have as nearly as they shall ever have the complete account of this tragedy. --Journal of American History

Dinnerstein not only tells the story of Phagan's and Frank's deaths, but he also places Frank's trial and lynching in the context of a rapidly changing southern society. --Shofar

The author's research has been painstaking and thorough. --Journal of Southern History

Dinnerstein not only tells the story of Phagan's and Frank's deaths, but he also places Frank's trial and lynching in the context of a rapidly changing southern society. --Shofar

The author's research has been painstaking and thorough. --Journal of Southern History

About the Author
Leonard Dinnerstein is an emeritus professor of American history at the University of Arizona, where he directed the Judaic Studies Program. His books include America and the Survivors of the Holocaust and Antisemitism in America.