About the Author

David W. Blight is the Sterling Professor of History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era; and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory; and annotated editions of Douglass's first two autobiographies. He has worked on Douglass much of his professional life, and been awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, among others.

Reviews

"Cinematic and deeply engaging. . . . a tour de force of storytelling." -- Brent Staples * The New York Times Book Review *
"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 *
"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 *
"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 *
"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 *
"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
"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 *
"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 *