Hawes Spencer reported on the gathering of right-wing racist activists and the ensuing riots in Charlottesville in August 2017 for the New York Times. In this book he bends over backwards to present what happened objectively – to picture Antifa violence alongside white-nationalist violence, and to document, through personal interviews not only with both sides that were demonstrating but also with city officials. "Hawes Spencer's Summer of Hate is a careful, pointillist narrative of the people, events, and controversies that came together in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017. Spencer is scrupulously careful to report only the facts and the truth about a brutalizing summer that still shapes Charlottesville a year later. Through his detailed tableaux, the tale emerges of a city still engaged in a profound reckoning over whether it might ever come together, or if it will pull itself further apart." - Dahlia Lithwick. "In often shocking detail, Hawes Spencer recounts the awful events leading up to, and following August 11th and 12th, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Summer of Hate is a sober reminder that racism and bigotry run deep, and that ridding humanity of these plagues will require equal measures of determination and courage―not just in one small city―but throughout the world." - Larry Sabato.
Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, a 2019 paperback reprint of a 2018 release. 272 pages with maps and photos. Trade paperback.