A new Ku Klux Klan arose in the early 1920s, a less violent but equally virulent descendant of the relatively small, terrorist Klan of the 1870s. Unknown to most Americans today, this "second Klan" largely flourished above the Mason-Dixon Line ― its army of four-to-six-million members spanning the continent from New Jersey to Oregon, its ideology of intolerance shaping the course of mainstream national politics throughout the twentieth century....

An award-winning journalist presents the story of Philip Van Cise, a rookie District Attorney who fought the KKK, organized crime, and government corruption in Denver in the 1920s and how his experiences still resonate one century later. At the height of the 1920s, the ex-frontier town of Denver emerged from the postwar boom as the future of the American city. But the progress and opportunity masked a stew of organized crime, elaborate swindles,...