Bound for Canaan

Name: Bound for Canaan
Brand: Harper Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Fergus Bordewich
ISBN: 9780060895075

Author: Fergus Bordewich

Narrator: Fergus Bordewich

Abridged: 5 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 08/09/2005

Categories: Nonfiction, Social Science, Cultural & Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, History, Social History, World History

Synopsis

An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for change.The true story of the Underground Railroad is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion arose a clash of values that evolved into a fierce fight for nothing less than the country's soul. Beginning six decades before the Civil War, freedom-seeking blacks and courageous whites worked together to save tens of thousands of lives, often at the risk of great physical danger to themselves. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only challenged prevailing mores but also subverted federal law.Meticulously researched and uncommonly engaging, Bound for Canaan shows why it was the Underground Railroad and not the civil rights movement that gave birth to this country's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for social change.Written and read by Fergus M. Bordewic

About Fergus Bordewich

Fergus M. Bordewich is the author of several books, including Bound for Canaan, Killing the White Man's Indian, and My Mother's Ghost, a memoir. The son of a national civil rights leader for Native Americans, he was introduced early in life to racial politics. As a journalist, he has written widely on political and cultural subjects in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, American Heritage, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Reader's Digest, and many other publications. He was born in New York City, and now lives in New York's Hudson River Valley with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sasha on November 07, 2016

I wanted a book about the Underground Railroad; here's the book my research led me to, and I'm glad it did. I had a pretty murky understanding of what the whole thing was about - like, Harriet Tubman and a bunch of underground tunnels? Now I know better. Here are all the stories you know: Nat Turner,......more

Goodreads review by KC on December 12, 2007

A truly, truly amazing read. A page-turner yet full of fascinating information. Best of all it debunks the idea that Blacks were passive victims during slavery who made no attempts to free themselves. If you are interested in this country and the people who created it, White and Black, read this boo......more

Goodreads review by Kim on October 25, 2008

I give this an excellent for ease of reading. Fergus unfolds history like an epic story, which is all the better because it was true. Harriet emerges a heroine, and many others who found the courage to fight the system. This is what history books should read like. Moving and expertly told, you get an......more

Goodreads review by Christopher on December 16, 2020

Fergus Bordewich's Bound for Canaan offers a lively narrative account of the Underground Railroad. Bordewich's book envisions the Underground as America's "first Civil Rights Movement," emphasizing the biracial coalition between freed blacks and white abolitionists that enabled the escape of thousan......more

Goodreads review by Tracy on June 05, 2021

An excellent history of not just The Underground Railroad and abolitionism, but also of most of the US at the time period. I really liked all the explanations of the politics. Super interesting and worth the extra time it takes, being nearly 600 pages long. Lots of great personal stories from the Gr......more