Hoods and Shirts

“Historians are fond of saying that we need detailed studies of an issue or a movement at the state level. Philip Jenkins has provided us with a first-class example of this genre with his well-researched study of right-wing extremism in Pennsylvania from 1925 to 1950. . . . . A fascinating study of a quarter-century of right-wing extremism in the Keystone state.” — Catholic Historical Review

“Jenkins has given us a fascinating study of a quarter-century of right-wing extremism in the Keystone state.” — Catholic Historical Review

“Philip Jenkins’s extraordinary study . . . is an excellent model for the type of case studies that are needed to understand the regional and local complications of the far Right in the years of the Great Depression and World War II.” — Journal of American History

“This unsettling local portrait of interwar America reveals why one of the most ethnically, socially, and politically diverse states gave rise to such a rich variety of right-wing hatred.” — CHOICE

“A gold mine of information on pro-fascist and pro-Nazi groups in Pennsylvania during the 1930s.” — Chronicles

“Jenkins knows the pertinent scholarship, has found fresh primary sources, and understands that there is no simple line between 'extremists' and the political mainstream. Hoods and Shirts is just the kind of local study we need to move beyond cliches about the far right.” — Leo P. Ribuffo, author of The Old Christian Right

“Moving beyond the usual fascination with charismatic leaders, Jenkins focuses on the participants in right-wing extremist movements and the communities in which they lived. This welcome study of the social foundations of fascist, ethnic, nationalist, and similar groups demonstrates, among other things, how some immigrants looked to racism, anti-Semitism, and anticommunism as conduits into the mainstream of American society during the Great Depression. This is an important book for anyone interested in the 1930s or the twentieth-century American Right.” — Leonard Moore, author of Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928