author
Ezra A. (Ezra Asher) Cook
1841–1911
A Chicago writer, editor, and publisher, he became known for forceful books and pamphlets attacking secret societies and later condemning the Ku Klux Klan. His work sits at an unusual crossroads of religious activism, polemics, and early twentieth-century reform publishing.
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About the author
Born in 1841, Ezra A. Cook was an American writer and editor whose career was closely tied to Protestant anti-secret-society activism. He is associated with the National Christian Association, which opposed groups such as Freemasonry and other fraternal orders, and he built a publishing program around that cause.
Cook wrote and published a long list of exposés, manuals, and controversial works aimed at organizations he believed were harmful or deceptive. Among the titles linked to him are books on Freemasonry and fraternal rituals, as well as Ku Klux Klan Secrets Exposed, a work that criticized the Klan's methods and ideology.
He spent much of his working life in Chicago and remained active as a publisher as well as an author. Although many of his books were openly partisan, they give modern readers a vivid look at the religious arguments, reform movements, and social conflicts that shaped parts of American public life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.