Frederick Douglass

David Blight has written the definitive biography of Frederick Douglass. With extraordinary detail he illuminates the complexities of Douglass's life and career and paints a powerful portrait of one of the most important American voices of the 19th century. . . . Magisterial. -- Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. * The Boston Globe * Extraordinary. . . . In Blight's pages, [Douglass's] voice again rings out loud and clear, melancholy and triumphant - still prophesying, still agitating, still calling us to action. -- Adam Goodheart * The Washington Post * A stunning achievement. Blight captures an icon in full humanity. From riveting drama in slavery and Civil War, his Douglass rises into clairvoyant genius on the blinkered centrality of race in our struggle for freedom. -- Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of America in the King Years A consistently engrossing book that is likely to remain the definitive account of Douglass's life for many years to come. -- Eric Foner * The Nation * Extraordinary. . . . Blight has certainly written, in the book's texture and density and narrative flow-one violent and provocative incident arriving right after another-a great American biography. -- Adam Gopnik * The New Yorker * The first major biography of Douglass in nearly three decades. . . . Blight isn't looking to overturn our understanding of Douglass, whose courage and achievements were unequivocal, but to complicate it - a measure by which this ambitious and empathetic biography resoundingly succeeds. -- Jennifer Szalai * The New York Times * Absorbing and even moving . . . Mr. Blight displays his lifelong interest in Douglass on almost every page, and his own voice is active and eloquent throughout the narrative. It is a book that speaks to our own time as well as Douglass's. . . . A brilliant book. -- John Stauffer * The Wall Street Journal * Cinematic and deeply engaging. . . . a tour de force of storytelling. -- Brent Staples * The New York Times Book Review *