Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

For the past few weeks I've been reading David Blight's Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Checking in at a cool 912 pages, this isn't a quick read. But Blight is a brilliant wordsmith with sublime turns of phrase on just about every page. Put into service of the extraordinary, complicated life and profound eloquence of Frederick Douglass himself, this Pulitzer-winning biography easily lives up to the hype.

"Douglass's great gift, and the reason we know of him today," Blight writes, "is that he found ways to convert the scars [the slave owner] Covey left on his body into words that might change the world."