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ISLAND ON FIRE

Name: ISLAND ON FIRE
Author: Tom Zoellner
ISBN: 978-0-674-98430-1

THE REVOLT THAT ENDED SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE

by Tom Zoellner ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2020

An elucidating study of one of the lesser-known slave rebellions of the 19th century.

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An engaging history of the horrific system of slavery practiced in Jamaica and the slave revolt that finally killed it. By the time the educated preacher Samuel Sharpe aroused his fellow slaves and neighbors to rebellion right after Christmas in 1831, there were only a few dozen elite English families in control of the vast sugar wealth of Jamaica, lording it over thousands of slaves. Sugar was the root of this evil, and Zoellner expertly delineates the massive human toll. “Feeding this addiction on a grand scale,” writes the author, “was made possible by the labor of the approximately 860,000 kidnapped Africans transported to Jamaica as slaves between 1600 and 1807.” Zoellner chronicles how young Englishmen jumped at the chance to gain their fortunes in the West Indies, and he ably shows how routinely and swiftly the degradations of slavery corrupted them. In Jamaica, life was short for both slave and master, for different reasons. The white population, vastly outnumbered by slaves, faced the “looming specter of rebellion and death,” which caused them to live unhealthy, hedonistic lives. “As an appalled visitor observed,” writes the author, “the white inhabitants ‘live like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah…they drink, eat, play, and dance, become pale as death and die like flies.’ ” The news of Nat Turner's revolt only months before had fired Sharpe's imagination—and horrified the planters—and he preached to his fellow slaves that their masters were actually keeping their freedom from them, granted in England, where a growing anti-slavery faction was gaining steam. The fuel was ready for ignition, and the fires burned all over the plantations during those first nights of rebellion. Resurrecting this important historical episode, Zoellner moves nimbly through the research, giving an exciting account of the events as well as the significant consequences when the news reached England weeks later. An elucidating study of one of the lesser-known slave rebellions of the 19th century.

Pub Date: May 12, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-674-98430-1

Page Count: 377

Publisher: Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 10, 2020

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NATIONAL ROAD
by Tom Zoellner

- BOOK REVIEW
TRAIN
by Tom Zoellner

- BOOK REVIEW
A SAFEWAY IN ARIZONA
by Tom Zoellner

- AWARDS
Finalists for the NBCC Awards Are Announced

- AWARDS
National Book Critics Circle Presents Awards

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GHOSTS OF HIROSHIMA

by Charles Pellegrino ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 5, 2025

This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.

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A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.

Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”

This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.

Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025

ISBN: 9798228309890

Page Count: 314

Publisher: Blackstone

Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025

Categories:

HISTORY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY

- BOOK REVIEW
TO HELL AND BACK
by Charles Pellegrino

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAST TRAIN FROM HIROSHIMA
by Charles Pellegrino

- BOOK REVIEW
GHOSTS OF VESUVIUS
by Charles Pellegrino

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

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New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

ON JUNETEENTH

by Annette Gordon-Reed ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 4, 2021

A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

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New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.

Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.

A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.