A sharp portrait of a unique American town that stands as “a stark symbol of self-determination.”
Historical study of the last shipment of enslaved Africans to America, who created a thriving town outside Mobile, Alabama, after the Civil War.
As the purported last slave ship to sail from West Africa to American shores, the Clotilda, which arrived in 1860, was recovered from the Mobile Delta in 2018. As Tabor recounts, even though the trans-Atlantic slave had been illegal since 1808, the wealthy slave owner Timothy Meaher managed to purchase 110 Africans from the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, in 1859. Yet Meaher was never prosecuted, skirting the authorities on the cusp of the Civil War. Diligently tracing the stories of those original handful of enslaved people, the author, focusing on the story of Cudjo Lewis, “the most famous survivor of the Clotilda’s voyage,” lays out their original plan to return to Africa. When that didn’t come to fruition, they bought some land and started a town. Despite hindrances to Black voting and racist practices in Alabama, the community grew. In 1927, after visiting the town, Zora Neale Hurston “wove her research…into a sixteen-page essay” that was published in The Journal of Negro History. Though “Hurston’s original material accounted for only a small fraction of the piece,” it nonetheless brought further notoriety to the town. However, industrial development by International Paper in the 1930s, and then Scott Paper the following decade, contributed to the increasing degradation of the local environment. As the author shows, alongside ecological problems, the local residents endured ongoing poverty and political disenfranchisement. “The situation in Africatown was a crystalline example of environmental racism,” he writes. Fortunately, in 2012, activists got the town added to the National Register of Historic Places, beginning a process of cleanup and preservation. Tabor’s detailed history is a good complement to Ben Raines’ The Last Slave Ship.
A sharp portrait of a unique American town that stands as “a stark symbol of self-determination.”Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781250766540
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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