Alan Gilbert (1)

While I can respect Gilbert for taking on a difficult topic, in terms of examining the war within a war that was the effort of those of African descent to win their own freedom during the American Revolution, the reality is that he’s written a very tedious monograph that was a chore to read. Even if I appreciate that Gilbert is trying to capture and emphasize what this experience meant to slaves and freedman from their perspective, I get little sense that Gilbert is interested in writing about the war itself; his main concern is with what the experience meant to the project of emancipation in the Atlantic World.

Also, if you’re going to court controversy, get on with business at hand if that’s what it takes to enliven the proceedings. Let’s just say that when you have four books listed on Amazon and no one has a good or a bad thing to say about your work that’s probably a bad sign.… (mehr)