Rating: 
Summary: It can, it did, and it does happen here.
Review: There are no adjectives that do justice to the depravity that is documented in this book. No book I have read has been more disturbing to read or comment upon. The reason is the proximity in time and place of these events of pure evil.Twenty-three States, one shy of 50% of the Continental United States, are represented in this book. Many of the States not involved are sparsely populated to this day. To say this genocide/holocaust was pervasive is more than reasonable. I use holocaust in its literal meaning of "wholly consumed by fire". I note the difference, as the events in Nazi Germany did not take place here. The burning of human victims on the soil of The United States has its own distinctive horror, which must be acknowledged as part of our History. The word History often implies a buffer of time; a space to distance ourselves from what some would like to forget. I have read, "Blacks should get over it". This is generally a claim that all this sadism ended with Lincoln. It is true that "only" 75% of the lynchings in the book are of "Blacks", but as the number of lynchings decreased the percentage rose to 90%. This book shows a lynching from the 1960's, NOT the 1860's. If the authors chose to include other photos, the murder by dragging in Texas of a "Black" man would bring us if not literally to today, then a number of years so low in single digits, recounting it as a number of months ago may be more reasonable. The other vacuous defense I have noted is, "I, my Family, my Grandparents, never did own slaves", and so on. And so what? What is documented in this book is less prevalent today because you will likely be caught and jailed/executed, because the world is watching, and now we care what others think. Do people suppose the basic nature of those that did or watched these acts, many of who are alive today has changed? Change doesn't happen in 40 years. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to sign anti-lynching legislation, while one million black soldiers fought for what this Country is supposed to represent, he sent a message not just about losing the Southern vote for his Presidency, but a much wider apathy. The sport of lynching attracted huge crowds. Special trains would bring entire Families to watch. One murder and mutilation was witnessed by 15,000 people. One 9 year old who could easily be alive today, and if so I truly hope is sane and was only an unwilling victim of Parents stated "I have seen a man hanged" he told his Mother "now I wish I could see one burned". What the book did not mention, and what would be devastating if done, is if the press chose to track down the participants and or the viewers. The photographs are there, the companies that made the postcards are probably gone, but the postcards were addressed. Some of the deviants of our species highlighted their faces when sending the cards to friends and Family. What would that exposure accomplish, for what is in those pictures is part of all of us, it is our nature. We are the only species that tortures its own for pleasure and amusement. From the text; "What was strikingly new and different in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the sadism and exhibitionism that characterized white violence. To kill the victim was not enough; the execution became public theater, a participatory ritual of torture and death, a voyeuristic spectacle prolonged as long as possible (once for 7 hours) for the benefit of the crowd". And it gets worse, parts of victims displayed in store windows, the scramble for body parts as mementos. Piece of human bone on a watch chain perhaps? And if you can imagine, there is even more. To this day our President can say nothing in terms of an official apology. Were he to do so the subject of reparations would arise, and that would be inconvenient now wouldn't it? Mr. Randall Robinson wrote "The Debt What America Owes To Blacks" that I believe would interest those who have read this work. The book "The Unsteady March: The Rise And Decline of Racial Equality in America" by Philip A. Klinkner and Rogers M. Smith, also makes excellent reading. Until we acknowledge as a people and as a Government, what happened in this Country for centuries, this book will be just that, a book. There will someday be a people capable of living in a Democracy and not abusing what it offers. If that Nation of People exists I have yet to read of them. Germany took responsibility for it's crimes, why can't we. Why do we suffer as allies the Nation of Turkey that slaughtered Armenians by the millions, and to this day denied it happened? The letter the man wrote below to his Children is beautiful. I wish I could agree with the thought that if we know our History we will not repeat it. We know what we have done, the style changes, but we as a people do not. We as a Nation do not require it of other Countries when we are arguably at our most influential. Not our business? Nonsense! Put our house in order, and if others desire our friendship, require the same. If we do not, History will repeat like the Seasons.
Rating:
Summary: No Due Process Blues
Review: There is nothing that can make right - a wrong done - that is unacknowledged. This book documents some of the more than 4,700 horrible wrongs - execution of criminal suspects without due process of law - witnessed by a cast of millions of willing and cheering participants. It takes on U. S. Dragons of repression - that breathe real fire, human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism - from 1880 to 1930 and went unchecked and unchallenged by the civil authorities of the day. These essays and photos attempt to sing a song stronger and sweeter than the acts of horror and terror (committed in the name of a pale Ethnic Supremacist and Perfidy Christology) it describes. It does battle with a sharp eye for detail and meaning in trying to understand this period of U. S. Human brutality most foul...most ugly. It will come as shock to nearly all to learn that U. S. Americans were the last people of Western Enlightenment to practice this grim ancient ritual and that these rituals of human sacrifice/cannibalism were to continue until as late as the early thirties of the 20th century. But be forewarned: The many male and female ritual cannibals in this - all-too Human and all-too true - drama go unpunished and unrepentant. There is no cosmic justice for the reader (or the sacrificed) in the end: just Cold, Hard Blood-Drenched U.S. blues upside the Soul. The living - just like the dead - in these essays and photos are covered in the muck of primitivism and forever stained in gore. The lives lost can not be replace or explained away. One who views these photos will leave the book with a bad taste in his/her mouth and the (real or imagined) stench of charred Human flesh in his/her nostrils for some time. This is exactly what the authors have had to do and this reader is "now" doing. Right or wrong, the authors contend, we all share the same dark spaces, hard corners and jagged edges as the ritual predators in this book. Litwack, Als and Lewis write that they are now haunted by the images in 'Without Sanctuary', and so shall you be - if you have the strength of character - to look, to read and image a place/time not to long ago. You will not feel good about the experience, but one may be able to enlarge her/his capacity for understanding Humankind and our common and shared, trouble and terrible, blood and Blues encrusted history. Also recommended: Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries by Orlando Patterson To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells by Linda O. McMurry This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kay Mills The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore The Beer can by the Highway: Essays on what's "America" about America by John Atlee Kouwenhover American Humor: A Study of National Character by Constance Rourke The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism by Regina M. Schwartz Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War by Barbara Ehrenreich The Blood of Abel: The Violent Plot in the Hebrew Bible by Mark Harold McEntire The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence by James G. Williams On Violence by Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt Violence and the Sacred by Rene Girard The Scapegoat by Rene Girard I will bear witness: A diary of the Nazi's Years, Vol. I-II by Victor Klemperer Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist Years of Lynchings by Ralph Ginzburg A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 by Stewart Emory Tolnay Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 by W. Fitzhugh Brundage Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South by W. Fitzhugh Brundage The Lynching of Cleo Wright by Domonic J. Capeci Contempt of Court: The Turn of the Century Lynching That Launched 100 Years of Federalism by Mark Curriden Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in U.S. History by Richard Gambino The 1891 New Orleans Lynching and U.S.-Italian Relations: A Look Back by Marco Rimanelli Uncle Tom's Story of His Life: An Autobiography, 1789-1876 by Josiah Henson A Consuming Fire: the fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South by Eugene D. Genovese The Southern Front: History and Politics in the Cultural War by Eugene D. Genovese Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz Black messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary manipulations of a religious myths by Wilson Jeremiah Moses We Wish to inform you that tomorrow we wlll be killed with our families by Peter Gourevitch Out of American: A Black Man Confronts Africa by Keith B. Richburg The Burden of Southern History by C. Vann Woodward The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness by Wole Soyinka Myth, Literature and the African World by Wole Soyinka The Open sore of a continent: A personal narrative of the Nigerian Crisis by Wole Soyinka The Furious Voice of Freedom: Essays Leon Forrest Notes of a Hanging Judy by Stanley Crouch The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race by Stanley Crouch Always in Pursuit: Fresh American Perspectives by Stanley Crouch South to a Very Old Place by Albert Murray The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy by Albert Murray Blues at you, Later!
Rating: 
Summary: gruesome yes, unusual through history, no
Review: This admittedly is a gruesome book, but this is not unusual in world history. There is a photo book on the rape of Nanking that is even worse, and I've seen many older books on atrocities in Africa by natives against other natives, in China, Russia, Germany, etc. 20th Century communism alone is one long series of genocides and atrocities, to the death toll of 150 million. Name a country and I will give you a genocide in their history. At the time of these lynchings in history, this sort of business was common all over the world, by all sorts of motivations and all types of people. I don't buy into the arguement that matters such as this can be used to punish descendants today. It has been a cruel world throughout history, this is only one small part of it worldwide.
Rating:
Summary: Hearing their cries!
Review: This book brought to light the prejudiceness of the world years ago and what it is today. I am happy that the author put a life to these postcards. I felt what he is trying to tell us is come to grips with what happened in the past so therefore it can be dealt with and left on the table and then we can walk away without hate for one another. I believe that this book can help all people. When I first saw and read some of it. I didn't see just blacks and some whites lynched. I saw beyond color and It made me cry. I stared at these peoples' eyes and I saw the pain the fear. Ultimately the relief of no more suffering and being treated differently because of the color of there skin. We as a people united can make a difference and this is my review on this book. I myself would reccommend this book to all people. Thank You
Rating:
Summary: This book broke my heart...
Review: This book is a mirror held up to the face of America. As a European student of African American history I was not unfamiliar with its subject, yet it hit me with such force that I was left feeling numb. Numb, beyond angry.... "Without Sanctuary" belongs in every library, every household - and not just those in the United States. It is painful to view, but it reminds us who and what we, humans are. If you think this book is solely about the past, a past overcome and left behind on the path of moral advancement, ask yourself why it was only the tiny Roth Horowitz gallery in New York that decided to exhibit the photographs from this collection (turned down by others). The exhibit subsequently moved to a bigger venue, and that, perhaps, gives us hope. I pray for the souls of the victims, I am finding it impossible to pray for the perpetrators.
Rating:
Summary: this is a book everyone of every culture should read
Review: This is an extremly powerful book.It truly gives the meaning of how hard it was,and still is to be black in america.This book makes you think about how much white america resents blacks.Once you read this book you'll never be the same.For better or for worse.I highly recomend this book for all cultures.
Rating:
Summary: What Man can do to Man
Review: Unbelievable. The editor has done a wonderful job of giving insight into Amerikkka's treatment of Afrikans during the Nadir(1877 to 1901) and up into the 1960s. Fully detailed, the editor brings these "Lost Souls" back to life with stunning descriptions of their "crimes" and their tragic deaths. If one wants to gain further insight into the lynch party and their ritualistic purpose, read Orlando Patterson's Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries, Book 2, The Feast of Blood. Thank You.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing, Beautiful Book
Review: Your life will never be the same after seeing this book. I am an American Studies major, with an emphasis on African American History post-Reconstruction, and I could not make it through this book without weeping. I am also a white woman. I believe very strongly that it should be mandatory for all white people in this country to view the photographs in this book so that we may honestly confront racisim in our lives, and in the lives of those who came before us. The revolting part of this book is not so much the bodies in the trees, although it is horrible to look at them. It is more horible to look at the people doing the lynching and the smiles on their faces. This is the legacy that most white people can not bear to face and must. When white people order this book, open it and weep in genuine sorrow for the sins of our forebearers,this country will finaly begin to open an honest dialog about its bloody history. Order this book, confront yourself and begin to learn what it truly means to be American. A good companion book that really explains the historical and social aspects of lynching is Leon Litwack's Trouble in Mind. These two books would be a good basic start to educating the reader about lyniching and its impact on all Americans.
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