The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom (The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures)
Hahn, a University of Pennsylvania history professor and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Nation under Our Feet (2003), bases his new book on the Nathan I. Higgins lectures he recently delivered at Harvard. Unquestionably scholarly in preparation and presentation, the book is not completely limited to a scholarly readership because it imparts too much important information and too many new interpretations to be ignored by a good general reader with a solid background. Three longish essays isolate a body of “proof” standing behind Hahn’s abiding belief that although certain factors in black American history present themselves as real and authentic, most historians have largely been blind to them, and their virtual nonexistence in historians’ eyes have made them invisible to the general public as well. These three factors are that the U.S. was a slaveholding nation, and slavery existed not simply in the South; a great slave rebellion during the Civil War has been largely ignored; and Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association were a far bigger movement than has been credited. --Brad Hooper