![]() ![]() ![]() The book draws on two large and complex bodies of scholarship. The value of Death or Liberty is that it offers new revelations to readers familiar with this field, even as it provides a lucid and informative introduction to those not deeply immersed in it. ![]() There is so much material out there on African Americans and the American Revolution that a synthesis has been sorely needed. ![]() I make this point not to diminish the significance of Egerton’s contribution but rather to underscore it. Public historians and schoolteachers have worked hard to bring these stories to broader audiences, with plentiful books, public television series, Websites, and museum exhibits now available for those interested in learning about African Americans in the Revolutionary era. Egerton’s elegant synthetic history was made possible by a decades-long explosion of scholarly interest in slavery, African American history, and ordinary people’s experiences in the American Revolution. Egerton’s Death or Libertypromises a narrative that “brims with compelling portraits of forgotten figures.” The people who fill this book’s pages are certainly compelling, but the “forgotten” label-so often attached to histories of early African Americans-is misleading. ![]()
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