Gerald Horne

Okay so this was so dense it was so hard to understand for someone whos not a historian which is really unfortunate because this is such an important book for anyone who's been thru the american school system. It's a shame... Because the analysis was spot on, but it was just so hard to read! The last 2 chapters were the best & most important but I wish he talked more about the black loyalists actually during the revolutionary war, and also the aftermath of the war & how this affected them (and also the people who made it to nova scotia and stuff which is how I heard of this book in the first place)… (mer)

Over/badly written, repetitive, full of passive voice obscuring who did what, and choked with ten-dollar words where ten-cent words (or no words) would be better. I like my adverbs, I’ll admit, but describing a provocative action as one that “stirred the pot irately” comes a lot closer to “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” than an author should get. The basic argument, which is that slavery and the resulting threat of slave rebellions were behind many of the key decisions that England and the American colonists made that ultimately led to the Revolution, seems sound: white Americans defended slavery as a means to get rich, while the English were less certain that it was worth the costs especially since they were also concerned with the Carribean and its bloodier revolts.… (mer)