Joe Bargmann

I’m biased because Earl is a friend, but this narrative is as harrowing as any I’ve ever read. I was a crime reporter for well more than a decade, so I’ve witnessed the gruesome and the grizzly, the bloody and putrid, and and I’ve deeply contemplated the cruelty humans can so vigorously demonstrate toward those they consider to be of a lower order. Because of Earl’s unflinching and exquisitely detailed examination of the notorious Murder Farm killings—built on Pulitzer-worthy reporting and rendered with cinematic clarity—Hell Put to Shame makes the mind reel and the heart shatter. Several passages in the book caused me to gasp and stop reading, devastated. I paused long enough to catch my breath and then waded back in, struck again and again like a boxer on the ropes by Earl’s narrative command and bare-knuckled delivery. Racism is not merely persistent and troubling in America. It is relentless, brutal, pervasive, and insidious. Earl succeeded in making me feel sick with moral outrage and determined to fight racism at every turn. Good books are fulfilling. Great books lodge their subject matter in your mind and shake your foundation. Read this book. It will change you for the better.