A good, solid biography of Frederick Douglass. His whole story is told well, with solid research in primary and secondary sources. Douglass was a great man, and this biography shows you why he was a great man. Which is what a good biography should do. (I want to read David W. Blight's recent Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom soon to compare the two.)

One issue. The author, McFeely, gets very Freudian many times. Every chapter or so, someone is gazing at Douglass sexually or homosexually or some incident is imbued with sexual feeling, repressed or subconscious. While that might sometimes be the case, it is mere supposition on McFeely's part. McFeely often puts the whippings of slaves as punishment in sexual terms. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a whipping is just a whipping. Antebellum Southern slavery had a lot of sexual elements (Douglass's account of his bare-breasted auntie being whipped was definitely a case of sexual jealousy, for instance), but it was not a conspiracy of repressed bisexuals wishing they could have sex with their male slaves (Covey's beating of Douglass probably wasn't sexual in the least, however McFeely may suggest it was). (Shouldn't someone named "McFeely" be wary of Freudian interpretations?) ( )