DWD's Reviews

Published in 2019 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Read by Robon Miles. Duration: 5 hours, 53 minutes. Unabridged.   Erica Armstrong Dunbar brings us an accessible biography of one of the true heroes of American history - Harriet Tubman. She Came to Slay is long enough to give a decent picture of her life but short enough that it doesn't intimidate potential readers. A traveling statue named honoring Harriet Tubman named "Journey to Freedom" I am not going to go through the entire biography of her life, but this book covers all of the major points of her life such as:  -Her escape from slavery;  -Her multiple trips back to Maryland to free family, friends and anyone that would go; -Her work in anti-slavery societies where she met and worked with people like Frederick Douglass, William Seward and John Brown; -The communities she helped start in New York and Canada; -Her work with women's rights groups and her struggles to get white women to include black women in their fi...

Published in 1993 by Scholastic. Get on Board is an introduction to the Underground Railroad aimed at grades 4-7. It is a solid little history of the origins of the abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad and slavery. It mostly focuses on the heroes of the abolitionist movement, but it does its best to try to work in a lot of individual stories of the Underground Railroad. For example, I enjoyed the letter that Jermain Wesley Loguen wrote to his former owner (he had run away) when she demanded that he pay for himself. It was the perfect blend of snark and indignant refusal. The longest biography in the book goes to Harriet Tubman with Frederick Douglass coming in a close second. That is appropriate since their stories are extraordinary. Haskins does a real solid job of introducing the two real-life people that the most famous African American characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin are based on and then reminding the reader of them when he discusses the novel and its impact. How...

Originally published in 1996. With Black Profiles in Courage , Kareem Abdul-Jabbar presents a look at American history through a different lens than you usually see. This book follows from even before the arrival of Columbus through Rosa Parks receiving her just accolades in the 1990's. His underlying theme, as explained in the title, is that African-Americans have been contributing in important ways the entire time, but they are often "whitewashed" from history. Abdul-Jabbar is best known for his time as a top-level basketball player. But he is not just a jock (if you are a fan, you know he never was JUST a jock.) He is also an amateur historian - and quite a thoughtful one. Clearly, he was inspired by the book Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy but this book is not structured in any way like that classic. The book starts with its weakest proposition from a historical perspective. There are historians that assert that African peoples were heavily involved in Meso...

Published by Scholastic in 2018 What Would She Do? is collection of very readable short biographies of women - which, after being factually correct, is the most important thing. As David McCullough said,  " No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read."  Woodward writes in an informal, approachable style that I enjoyed quite a bit. Each biography is accompanied by a full page illustration of the woman and a little chart with basic biographical information. There is also a large pullout quote from or about her. For example, for Emma Watson there is this quote: "The saddest thing for a girl to do is to dumb herself down for a guy." Generally, I did not like the "What Would _____ Do?" section that was included at the end of each biography. The author was clearly trying to make a connection between the women in the book and the typical American student with typical American student problems. But, trying to connect Cleopatra...

Published by the National Park Service in 1996 The format of this small book  (88 pages) is much like a small old-style National Geographic with three wide-ranging informative  essays by Larry Gara, Brenda E. Stevenson and C. Peter Ripley.  The pictures are excellent in that they are reproduced wonderfully and well-shot. A notice from 1851. Most importantly, these three essays are an excellent introduction to the topics of slavery, the slave trade (not just to the United States but also to the Caribbean and Brazil) and the contradictions of some of the Founding Fathers fighting for their personal freedom while owning other people. But, the heart of the book is the fight against slavery - both political and practical. After all, it is one thing to say you are against slavery and it quite another to help a runaway slave that comes to your door and help her move on to another safe place. The book documents the different strains of Abolitionism (Do you help fund th...

A compelling look into one of America's (misunderstood?) icons Published in October 2011 by Macmillan Audio Read by Daniel Oreskes Duration: 11 hours, 9 minutes John Brown is one of those well-known yet elusive figures in history. He is literally in all of the American history books, but most people know almost nothing about him except for a few headline snippets like "Bleeding Kansas" and "Harper's Ferry" and "Slave Revolt." More knowledgeable readers may remember he used a sword to kill pro-slavery settlers in Kansas and worked with several prominent anti-slavery figures before his raid into Harpers Ferry, including Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and that his raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry was an utter failure and undoubtedly proved that he was insane. Or, was he? And, was the raid really a failure? Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising is an excellent biography of John Brown as well a well-rounded look at the politics...

Well-written biography of a true American hero Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad is a fantastic little biography of Harriet Tubman. Tubman has always been one of my personal heroes and this book does her story justice. Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) I would say this book can be easily enjoyed by 4th graders and up. It also could serve as a great starting point for adults that don't know much about slavery and the American Abolitionist movement. While telling the story of Tubman's life, Petry also includes at the end of nearly every chapter historical tidbits about the slavery and the Abolitionist movement at the national level. The discussion of her service in the Civil War as a scout in the coastal areas of South Carolina spurred me to do some further research. Her commanding officer in the raids was Colonel James M. Montgomery, the nutty commander in the movie Glory with this memorable line: "You see sesesh has to be cleared a...

An excellent introduction to the topics of slavery and the Underground Railroad. Published by Clarion Books in 2000. While Bound for the North Star: True Stories of Fugitive Slaves is obviously aimed for the "young adult" crowd, it would serve as an excellent primer for ANYONE interested in learning more about that sad, sad topic in America's history: slavery . Harriet Tubman The author includes 12 stories about slaves who escaped north, mostly with the help of the Underground Railroad. Each story describes a different type of escape or incident - varying from the case of Solomon Northrup - a free black man who was drugged and sold into slavery while he was working in Washington, D.C. to John "Fed" Brown, a field slave who traveled a roundabout trip to freedom covering thousands of miles to John Price - an escaped slave who was captured in Ohio, but was eventually freed thanks to the near-riot of the Oberlin College community. The book ends up with the ...