NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICESAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE RECOMMENDED BOOKWINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZEOne morning in 1805; off a remote island in the South Pacific; Captain Amasa Delano; a New England seal hunter; climbed aboard a distressed Spanish ship carrying scores of West Africans he thought were slaves. They weren't. In fact; they were performing an elaborate ruse; having risen up earlier and slaughtered most of the crew and officers. When Delano; an idealistic; anti-slavery republican; finally realized the deception-that the men and women he thought were humble slaves were actually running the ship-he rallied his crew to respond with explosive violence. Drawing on research on four continents; The Empire of Necessity is the untold history of this extraordinary event and its bloody aftermath. Delano's blindness that day has already inspired one masterpiece-Herman Melville's Benito Cereno. Now historian Greg Grandin returns to these dramatic events to paint an indelible portrait of a world in the throes of revolution; providing a new transnational history of slavery in the Americas-and capturing the clash of peoples; economies; and faiths that was the New World in the early 1800s.
Sloane William Milligan 2010-08-09Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.69 x .95 x 7.44l; 1.83 #File Name: 1177118556470 pagesLife of Napoleon Bonaparte
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