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★★★★★ 5
Spectacular Albeit Unknown History of Race Relations
Format: Hardcover
This is a great piece of historiography about something few know about at all --- slavery in New York City in the 18th century. How about a slave "rebellion" in New York City, how about more people burned at the stake than in the Salem witchcraft trials, how about dark byways and highways of old New York, barely transformed from its days as New Amsterdam, dark plots in dank places, shrill frightened tyrants overreacting with bloody retribution, burned ruins of an early African American village in Central Park?
One cannot make up this stuff, it is too real so it must be history at its best.
And written by one of our premier authors of history, a woman who makes our history live in The New Yorker to the acclaim of many, and yet whose best book, this one, is still too little known.
If you appreciate Harry Truman's remark that the only new thing under the Sun is the history you haven't read, then this is one to curl up with and marvel at; a great way to spend a rainy day or a dark night.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2010
