Hartsville, SC - The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, an acclaimed anthology of historical essays edited by Dr. Shawn Lay, associate professor of history at Coker College, has been released by the University of Illinois Press in a new and expanded paperback edition.

By addressing a set of common questions in the book, Lay and other scholars examine the rise of racial and religious intolerance in six western communities, focusing on the large and powerful Klan of the 1920s. The Invisible Empire in the West, first published in 1992, has received uniformly high praise in academic journals, being described by one leading scholar as “well conceived, thoroughly researched, and eloquently written… a valuable corrective grounded in substantial primary research that provides new facts as well as a more realistic interpretation.”

The author of two other books, Lay received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Texas at El Paso and his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. He has been teaching history at Coker College since 1996 and was selected Master Professor of the Year by Coker students in 2002.