A concise, solid biography of “the first revolutionary abolitionist,” a diminutive man who was decades ahead of his time.
A biography of a nearly forgotten Quaker whose life still resonates.
In his youth, Benjamin Lay (1681-1759), born in Colchester, England, was an unschooled shepherd and glover. Though a hunchback and not much taller than 4 feet, he became a common sailor. The Caribbean island of Barbados, where he became a merchant, was a major center of the world slave trade. As Rediker (Atlantic History/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail, 2014, etc.) notes, this was where Lay viewed firsthand the manifold evils of the traffic in human beings, leading to his career as a fervent and intractable abolitionist. With his wife, Sarah, who matched his mighty spirit, Lay moved to Pennsylvania to join the Society of Friends. There, he quickly made himself unwelcome through his fervent preaching against slavery, especially targeting fellow Friends who kept slaves. In a form of guerrilla theater, at one meeting, clad in a military tunic, he stabbed a concealed bladder with a sword, spattering nearby Quakers with blood-red juice. Lay was formally disowned by various groups as he persisted in his demands for piety, humility, and reverence for all life. Through it all, he practiced what he preached, living in a cave, making his own clothes, and growing his own food (he was a staunch vegetarian). Ascetic and religious and also an autodidact, Lay compiled a significant text, which was largely a commonplace book with lessons from the Old Testament and the book of Revelation as well as classical philosophy. Titled, clearly enough, All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates, it was edited and published by his good friend Benjamin Franklin. Relying on Lay’s book and pamphlets, Quaker records, and contemporaneous accounts, Rediker provides a valuable addition to abolitionist historiography.
A concise, solid biography of “the first revolutionary abolitionist,” a diminutive man who was decades ahead of his time.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8070-3592-4
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.
A master storyteller’s character-driven account of a storied year in the American Revolution.
Against world systems, economic determinist and other external-cause schools of historical thought, McCullough (John Adams, 2001, etc.) has an old-fashioned fondness for the great- (and not-so-great) man tradition, which may not have much explanatory power but almost always yields better-written books. McCullough opens with a courteous nod to the customary villain in the story of American independence, George III, who turns out to be a pleasant and artistically inclined fellow who relied on poor advice; his Westmoreland, for instance, was a British general named Grant who boasted that with 5,000 soldiers he “could march from one end of the American continent to the other.” Other British officers agitated for peace, even as George wondered why Americans would not understand that to be a British subject was to be free by definition. Against these men stood arrayed a rebel army that was, at the least, unimpressive; McCullough observes that New Englanders, for instance, considered washing clothes to be women’s work and so wore filthy clothes until they rotted, with the result that Burgoyne and company had a point in thinking the Continentals a bunch of ragamuffins. The Americans’ military fortunes were none too good for much of 1776, the year of the Declaration; at the slowly unfolding battle for control over New York, George Washington was moved to despair at the sight of sometimes drunk soldiers running from the enemy and of their officers “who, instead of attending to their duty, had stood gazing like bumpkins” at the spectacle. For a man such as Washington, to be a laughingstock was the supreme insult, but the British were driven by other motives than to irritate the general—not least of them reluctance to give up a rich, fertile and beautiful land that, McCullough notes, was providing the world’s highest standard of living in 1776.
Thus the second most costly war in American history, whose “outcome seemed little short of a miracle.” A sterling account.Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-2671-2
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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A powerful voice on behalf of young people who should not be stigmatized but need support from schools and communities to...
An unvarnished account of one woman's painful “journey from victim to survivor,” as she came to understand the “dynamics of commercial sexual exploitation, especially child sex trafficking.”
In this debut, Smith, a public advocate for trafficking victims, begins in 1992 with her own experience. At the age of 14, she was briefly a prostitute before being rescued by the police. Since she was manipulated rather than subjected to violence, she was shamed by the false belief that she had chosen to be a prostitute. Only in 2009, three years after her marriage, did she feel able to reveal her story and give testimony before Congress. She blames the media for objectifying sexuality and creating an environment in which an estimated 100,000 in the U.S. are victimized annually. Smith describes how one afternoon, she was walking through the mall when a young man approached her. They flirted briefly, and he slipped her his phone number, asking her to get in touch. She describes her vulnerability to his approach. She was socially insecure. Both of her parents were alcoholics, and before the age of 10, she had been repeatedly abused sexually by a cousin. In her eagerness to have a boyfriend, she responded to his come-on and agreed to a meeting. As it turned out, he was profiling her for a pimp, and it was the pimp who met her—accompanied by a prostitute, there to show her the ropes. Their approach was nonthreatening, and they suggested that, in the future, she might have a career in modeling. Many unhappy children, writes the author, “are lured into trusting their traffickers” due to their lack of self-esteem. In the aftermath of the experience, although she finished college and had a successful career, Smith struggled with depression and substance abuse.
A powerful voice on behalf of young people who should not be stigmatized but need support from schools and communities to protect them from predators.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-137-27873-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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