There are a number of problems that Blight inherits with this territory, the first being that Douglass told his own story three times and told it well. By foregrounding the story of one extraordinary man, Blight also delivers the larger story of four of the most dramatic decades in our national history, for which Frederick Douglass provides a stentorian voice-over. But Blight does more than provide us with a microscopic view of Douglass’s genius and his humanity. In Prophet of Freedom, Blight allows us to experience both the exuberance and the difficulties of a life acted out on stages. While many of the contradictions in Douglass’s life were the subject of rumors and half-truths in his own time, Blight explores them fully and tactfully without succumbing to the temptations of historical gossip. Blight brings a deft hand to his portrait of a prophet who was, after all, human. in David Blight, we have a historian whose elegant, suitably lofty prose is up to the task of describing the life and work of a man who believed deeply in the transformative power of the word.
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