This is a book for all intelligent readers interested in the Civil War and Reconstruction, African American History, and Abolition Studies. Still, I was surprised by some of what Blight brings to light, and persuaded by many of Blights’s conclusions about Douglass’s life.ĭavid Blight is a Yale professor and this book accords with scholarly standards, but it avoids the jargon and exclusivity of some academic history. While I am hardly a Douglass devotee, I have more familiarity with his life than most readers. I have also visited some sites associated with Douglass’s life in Maryland and in New England and New York. I have read one of Douglass’s autobiographies and McFeely’s biography. It also offers an unvarnished account of the Great Man’s private life without descending into the salacious. The book covers all of the years of Douglass’s life and all aspects of his long career. The first new full biography of Douglass since William McFeely’s 1991 book, this is a massive work of prodigious research that is coupled with straightforward writing. David Blight has written a wonderful biography of Frederick Douglass that is likely to be the standard against which other work on the great human rights advocate is judged for at least a generation.
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