Timothy Egan on Extremism and Fear

Ryan speaks with Timothy Egan about his new book A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them , how and why politics and extremism often operate hand-in-hand, dangerous misconceptions about white supremacy in America, better ways to teach American history, the fundamental lessons that he has learned about people over his long and varied career, and more. Timothy Egan is an American author, journalist and former op-ed columnist for The New York Times . His nine published books cover a wide range of historical topics, including most notably the immediate aftermath of the Dust Bowl with The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl , which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the Washington State Book Award in History/Biography. His other award-winning works include The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest (1991), The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (2009), and " Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher " (2013). In 2001, The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series to which Egan contributed, " How Race…