No way was I going to read an 892-page book, even if it won the Pulitzer Prize and even if 121 of those pages are footnotes. But this biography of Douglass — who rose from enslavement in the South to become one of our nation’s great 19th-century orators and abolitionists — seemed like an important book for this moment, so I took a deep breath and started.
To my surprise, I was riveted and glad it was so long so I could live in it awhile. It’s a nuanced portrait of a complicated man and a sweeping history that illuminates our country today.
