Adam Rothman is Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University.
[A] riveting narrative... Rothman's theme is the moral logic of
slavery as embedded in law and social custom. -- Jason Berry *
Daily Beast *
The book's major novelty is its focus on individual personal
suffering as opposed to a typical slavery history which is
concerned with the quantity of suffering... The informal and
engaging tone succeeds in lending Beyond Freedom's Reach an
accessibility to introduce non-specialists to the field of study,
whilst aptly adding a human touch to an emotional subject. --
Michael Warren * LSE Review of Books *
Meticulously researched, well-written and thoughtfully argued, this
work should attract not only students of African-American history;
those who study southern and Civil War history will enhance their
knowledge of 1850-1860s Deep South culture. -- Carol Wilson * Civil
War Book Review *
The extraordinary odyssey of Rose Herera to recover her kidnapped
children from slavery illuminates the impact of the Civil War on
the enslavers and the enslaved and reminds us of the precariousness
of freedom during the Reconstruction era. An impressive and
compelling history. -- Randy J. Sparks, author of Where the
Negroes Are Masters: An African Port in the Era of the Slave
Trade
Amidst slavery's unraveling in New Orleans, Rose Herera fought to
prevent her owner from taking her children to Havana, 'beyond
freedom's reach.' Rothman's recovery of Herera's remarkable story,
her incarceration and journey through the legal system to rescue
her children, marks an important contribution to the history of
emancipation and the contingency of wartime freedom. -- Thavolia
Glymph, author of Out of the House of Bondage: The
Transformation of the Plantation Household
Adam Rothman weaves together an incisive narrative of slavery,
freedom, and family in wartime Louisiana. -- Karen Cook Bell *
Journal of Southern History *
Adam Rothman has contributed a gem to our understanding of the end
of slavery. -- Minoa Uffleman * Arkansas Review *
A riveting chronicle. -- Wilma King * American Historical Review
*
This is microhistory at its best. -- Lawrence N. Powell * Journal
of American History *
In this gem of social history, Rothman recovers the lives of Rose
Herera and her family. -- Alfred L. Brophy * The Historian *
Ideally suited to the undergraduate classroom. -- Richard Bell *
Journal of the Civil War Era *
Besides being a truly engaging story, Rothman's work is a model of
how the historian sleuth can imaginatively explore large issues by
following clues and tracing leads at the personal and local level,
cues often unseen at first glance. -- Joyce Broussard * Civil War
History *
I have said before that we are in a renaissance of excellent
historical writing for a general public that wants to read
something more than hagiographic narratives. Add Adam Rothman's
Beyond Freedom's Reach to the list. Rothman tells the story
of Rose Herera, a New Orleans slave whose children were spirited
away to Cuba by her master during the Civil War. Centering
kidnapping in the slave experience, Rothman takes what could be a
fairly slender story based upon a relative paucity of evidence to
build a tale of great bravery and persistence within a rapidly
changing world where African-Americans had relatively little power
even in the immediate aftermath of the war. -- Erik Loomis *
Lawyers, Guns, and Money *
Rothman's narrative is punctuated by expert analysis, and as such
is a useful work for students, scholars, and a general public
alike. It is particularly valuable as a book that seeks to shed
light on kidnapping, a difficult phenomenon for historians to study
given that its scope (in any era) is never accurately reflected in
the records. For this reason alone, one could call Rothman's study
masterful, because he demonstrates how historians can bring a
variety of research techniques to bear on an elusive topic. It
stands as a model for how we might reconstruct the subaltern
history of kidnapping and connect it with the world of military
might and political intrigue within the legal thicket inhabited by
both kidnappers and their victims. -- H. Robert Baker * American
Nineteenth Century History *
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