Willmington Star News Reviews Bricks Without Straw

"Duke University Press has performed a public service by releasing, in an inexpensive ($23.95) paperback edition, a North Carolina classic," writes Ben Steelman in his Willimgton Star News review of Bricks Without Straw, the novel of Reconstruction by North Carolina judge Albion W. Tourgée. Steelman writes about how Tourgée countered other contemporary accounts of Reconstruction, rejecting "Southern charges that it was marked by corruption and incompetence (at least, any more corruption and incompetence than the governments its followed and preceded). Rather, he shows how black efforts at self-determination were sabotaged by Klan violence, once the protective umbrella of federal occupation was removed."