bookshelf

THE SLAVE'S CAUSE

Name: THE SLAVE'S CAUSE
Author: Manisha Sinha
ISBN: 978-0-300-18137-1

A HISTORY OF ABOLITION

by Manisha Sinha ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2016

Wide-ranging and admirably ambitious, to be read alongside Hugh Thomas’ The Slave Trade (1997) and Eric Foner’s The Fiery...

bookshelf

Comprehensive survey of the abolitionist movement in Colonial and independent America.

“The history of abolition begins with those who resisted slavery at its inception,” writes Sinha (Univ. of Massachusetts; The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina, 2000) by way of opening, though one wonders if that resistance could not be traced farther back than 1721. She continues: trans-Atlantic slavery was an interracial affair, and without the resistance of African slaves themselves, the abolitionist movement in the dominant white society would not have taken hold. For instance, black abolitionists such as Paul Cuffe and John Marrant had traveled to Britain in order to build an “antislavery wall” of political opposition to a trade that had once flourished there. In this endeavor, they paved the way for William Lloyd Garrison, who, backed by largely unheralded black abolitionists such as Thomas Van Rensselaer and David Ruggles, was instrumental in building the second wave of abolitionism in the new republic. Interestingly, Sinha examines the cross strands of politics that sometimes united and sometimes divided the abolitionist movement as it grew: John Brown, for instance, is rightly considered a prime mover in the eventual demolishing of slavery in the United States, but his armed insurrectionary strategy (leading to modern, anachronistic efforts to “label Brown a terrorist”) alienated pacifists in the cause. Leading abolitionists of the turbulent 1820s had the goal of “marrying abolition with feminism, communitarian, and workingmen’s movements,” to say nothing of temperance. Sinha’s capable but stolid; one wishes that more of, say, Jill Lepore’s or Doris Kearns Goodwin’s spirit pervaded the proceedings, especially in recounting the tangled politics underlying the Lincoln administration’s legislative accomplishments. Still, though it’s no Team of Rivals, the book covers a great deal of ground well.

Wide-ranging and admirably ambitious, to be read alongside Hugh Thomas’ The Slave Trade (1997) and Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial (2010), among other recent books in the field.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-300-18137-1

Page Count: 784

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015

Categories:

bookshelf

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

bookshelf

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

Categories:

- SEEN & HEARD
Bill Gates Shares His Summer Reading List

bookshelf

TOMBSTONE

THE EARP BROTHERS, DOC HOLLIDAY, AND THE VENDETTA RIDE FROM HELL

by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.

bookshelf

Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.

The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.

Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.