The silent film masterpiece ""Birth of a Nation"" (1914)--sprawling, controversial, even incendiary-- would be banned, scorned and censored, yet would survive to become one of the greatest, most legendary films in cinema history. A violent epic of the South both during the Civil War and the tragic, miserable days of Reconstruction, ""Birth of a Nation"" would present to the world an heretical retelling of a painful period of American history, one that many would just as soon forget. Now here is the source material for that epic masterpiece of war and its aftermath, of courage, cowardice, conspiracy and revenge. Thomas Dixon's novel takes a long, hard look at brutal suppression and injustice, at arrogant tyranny and the sorts of events that lead to the infamous struggle. Harsh and uncompromising, ""The Clansman"" is like no other novel you have ever read. Flying in the face of conventional history, it is indeed as if it were, in the words of Woodrow Wilson, ""Like history writ with lightning!""