About the Author

A graduate of the Loyola University Institute of Politics, Michael Zatarain has worked for a variety of special-interest groups as a governmental consultant. In 1983 he showed great promise in the political arena with an outstanding, but unsuccessful, campaign for the Louisiana House of Representatives. This diverse political background, combined with his Louisiana heritage, aroused in Zatarain a keen interest in the phenomenon of David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and past Louisiana state representative. Zatarain spent hundreds of hours interviewing Duke's family, former classmates, political allies and enemies, Klan members, and Duke himself in an attempt to understand the thinking behind his radically racist crusade. In fact, Zatarain interviewed David Duke more than fifty times, for a total of more than a hundred hours, during the preparation of this fascinating and thoroughly researched account.