A riveting addition to the history of the search for freedom in the Americas.
A microhistory of scholarly significance, this action-packed book enlarges understanding of the New World’s history in the era of international conflict on the eve of transformative Western revolutions.
Every historian hopes to stumble on records that alter understanding of the past. Through industry and luck, Kars, a historian of slavery, has done just that. Her discovery of never-used Dutch archives informs this tale of a previously unknown slave uprising on South America’s northern coast. Written in lively, detailed prose, the narrative offers fresh looks at slavery in the New World and, equally important, slaves’ efforts to free themselves from bondage. The “collective armed rebellion” along the Berbice River in today’s Guyana, then a Dutch colony, started in 1763. Although it eventually failed, the violent insurrection drew in native tribes, Spanish and Dutch forces from Europe, and colonists from neighboring settlements. The incident is historically significant because the slaves who took independence into their own hands controlled an entire colony for over a year—something unprecedented until Haitian slaves began freeing themselves in 1791 in a successful 13-year struggle. The novelty of this book is the author’s presentation of the rebellion’s records: an incredible 900 slave testimonies previously unknown and unused until Kars unearthed them. They contain the words and voices of the mutinous slaves, voices rarely captured with such fidelity and in such numbers in the archives of other insurrections. It’s these voices, and Kars’ skill in bringing them to life, that keeps the text from being a dry academic study. So, too, does the story’s classic tragic arc: dashes for freedom, alliances between slaves and Indigenous tribes, in-fighting and betrayals, heroic leaders, barbarities on all sides, and deflating defeat. Though the rebellion failed, the Berbice colony never recovered from the costs of defeating the uprising. It was a harbinger of things to come.
A riveting addition to the history of the search for freedom in the Americas.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62097-459-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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