Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martins Press for this ARC.

I had never heard anything about Athens, Tennessee. Not surprising, since I am from Ireland. But there’s a good tale here and possibly should be know by more people. I found parts of the book confusing in the way the story was laid out but over all it was an enjoyable read and a fascinating piece of history. ( )

I've heard this story before, in bits and pieces. Maybe an article in some magazine, a short piece on some television show, regardless, I have heard this story before, except..

This book is comprehensive, but not dry or drawn out. Lots of finer details and background of the actors involved. How the corruption went up to the office of the governor and yet how little Washington could or would do. We see what the GIs when through, the citizens of Athens experiences of war and how that gave them the determination and courage that lead down the road they did. And, what happen after that election day and night.

Thoroughly enjoyable. DeRose brought the details together that made this story, gave it life, believable and full of hope. History buffs should love it. People concern with today’s state of our two-party system will love it too.


I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Tyranny and greed are two of the most destructive elements of man’s character; determination and compassion their antidote. In his new book, The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How WWII Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution, Chris DeRose masterfully recounts the clash of character that culminated on August 1, 1946, in the streets of Athens, Tennessee, and countryside of McMinn County.

With a political machine that would make Robert Penn Warren drool, Tennessee spent the depression and WWII years in the shadow of Memphian E.H. Crump. Evidence of Crump’s hand in East Tennessee, and especially McMinn County, was Paul Cantrell. During those years, Tennessee was a predominately Democratic state. However, much of East Tennessee was solidly Republican. Athens, halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga, serves as the county seat for McMinn County, which was and remains to this day, one of Tennessee’s most heavily Republican counties.

DeRose begins quite simply by giving us a list of players. Tracing their days as children and teenagers, he provides insight into how they became the men whose lives would converge on August 1, 1946. With this, we learn they were not strangers that history drew together in place and time to create a life-changing event. Most knew or were acquainted with one another. Some had known each other their entire lives. DeRose’s telling of the months leading up to the election of 1946 pulls the reader back like the hammer of a pistol.

DeRose bookends his telling of the Battle of Athens between two poignant quotes.

“Yes, we broke the law. And so did George Washington.” – Felix Harrod

Growing in Athens, I knew Mr. Harrod, one of the veterans returning to Athens after WWII, as a very humble and mild-mannered man who I saw in church or around town with never than anything less than a smile and kind word to offer. I held him akin to Mr. Rogers, who premiered when I was six.

“The real story of the Battle of Athens is about reconciliation, thankfully.” – Paul Willson

The grandson of Paul Cantrell, Paul Willson, is also my distant cousin as well as someone who is and has been so incredibly supportive of so many over the years.

Chris DeRose pulls no punches in his telling of the Battle of Athens. For me, it erased the often-heard mantra that these were just good old boys whose argument got out of hand. Thousands of rounds fired, a few sticks of dynamite tossed, and a mason jar or two of moonshine consumed. Still, no one was killed, and in the end, this was just another story of McMinn County boys being McMinn County boys. You could expect no less from men whose grandfathers had declared war on Spain a week before the United States of America instigated the Spanish American War. Erasing this dismissive pasha version of history, DeRose makes room for the most prominent outcome of the Battle of Athens. On August 2, 1946, these men and their families who had been opponents and enemies for so long began working together on a new project. They constructed a community and way of life we proudly call home. ( )

If Chris DeRose’s The Fighting Bunch were a novel, I probably would have put it down almost as quickly as I picked it up. I would have found the premise of the book to be too farfetched for me to take it seriously, and I would have been unwilling to suspend my level of disbelief to that degree. If nothing else, that shows how naïve I can be about some of the things that happened in America’s s relatively recent past. The book’s subtitle, a long one, says it all: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution. But I suspect I’m not the only one who never heard about what happened in Athens, Tennessee, in 1946 after a group of battle-hardened veterans came home and found their county to be completely controlled by one corrupt politician and his gang of criminal-enforcers.

When the bloody battle was all over, the (mostly) young men who fought and won the Battle of Athens began to realize that they might be in big trouble. After all, what they had just done was not exactly legal, so they could very well themselves end up prisoners in the jail they had just liberated from the political machine so determined to rob them of that day’s election victory. Wiser heads in the group convinced the rest that it was time for all of them to shut up about what had just happened in their little Tennessee town. And they did exactly that - even to the extent that their own children and grandchildren were never sure exactly what role their elders played in the armed rebellion.

Chris DeRose, when he began The Fighting Bunch, realized that only half the story had ever been told, and he knew that the time left for gathering first-hand accounts of the events of that night was fast running out. Only a handful of men were left to tell the story. DeRose, though, found the next best thing: adult children of the men who were willing to share both their own memories and any original papers left behind by their fathers, along with even some of the original acetate recordings of the live radio broadcast by station WROL from that night. As indicated by its dozens of footnotes and an extensive list of interviews, DeRose did his homework, and it shows. His account of “the only successful armed rebellion since the Revolution” and the men who pulled it off is fascinating.

Bottom Line: The Fighting Bunch is a rather shocking account of how a group of WWII veterans, men themselves instrumental in assuring the freedom of Europe and the rest of the world, came back to Tennessee to find their own home-county under the thumb of a despicable dictator and the murdering thugs he employed. No one dared oppose the gang - even at first, the veterans themselves - but what happened when the ex-military men reached their breaking-point is a story that readers will find difficult to forget.

(Review Copy provided by Publisher) ( )