Fergus M. Bordewich - Bound for Canaan The Underground Railroad

Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America
by Fergus M. Bordewich, Read by Peter Jay Fernandez, 96 kbps, Unabridged


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bound-for-canaan-fergus-m-bordewich/1100549318

Overview
An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for change.

The true story of the Underground Railroad is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion arose a clash of values that evolved into a fierce fight for nothing less than the country's soul. Beginning six decades before the Civil War, freedom-seeking blacks and courageous whites worked together to save tens of thousands of lives, often at the risk of great physical danger to themselves. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only challenged prevailing mores but also subverted federal law.

Meticulously researched and uncommonly engaging, Bound for Canaan shows why it was the Underground Railroad and not the civil rights movement that gave birth to this country's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for social change.

Library Journal
Countless black and white Americans operated the Underground Railroad, defying slaveholders and the federal government to escort fugitive slaves over land or by sea to freedom-and risking severe punishment if captured. Bordewich (Killing the White Man's Indian) covers six decades of the Underground Railroad, from its inchoate beginnings to its height, when it boasted a complex network of individuals determined to eliminate slavery from a nation proclaiming to be the land of liberty. Similar in scope to David W. Blight's Passages to Freedom, this work takes into account the many parties involved at all levels of the Underground Railroad. Bordewich draws mainly from primary sources to craft a rich, spellbinding, and readable narrative for lay readers, praising Underground Railroad men and women for setting in motion "far-reaching political and moral consequences that changed [race] relations in ways more radical than any since the American Revolution" and long before the modern Civil Rights Movement. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.