A Festival of Violence

''A Festival of Violence is a first-rate piece of research and analysis on a topic of considerable historical importance. It represents a model exercise of using the historical and sociological literature to develop hypotheses and then analyzing them with social science tools to present the results in a broad historical, social scientific context. This is an important work of scholarship, of interest to historians and social scientists, as well as to those concerned with the study of African-Americans and the U.S. South.''--Stanley L. Engerman, professor of economics and history, University of Rochester