RaveNPR\"Steve Luxenberg\'s storytelling mastery may be most evidenced by the fact that the big, sprawling swath of history he bites off in his new book... does not read like a big, sprawling, swath of history. The story feels neither distant nor lifeless, and Luxenberg\'s careful narrative choices creates a lucidity that saves save the book from ever feeling unwieldly, even at more than 600 pages. The story is briskly told — and that is impressive, in part because this is not a biography with the advantage of a single protagonist to focus the narrative and drive the action ... But Separate lands as intimate, perfectly interlocking portraits of some of the men and women who lived through the abolitionist- and Reconstruction-era maelstrom, and it is a dazzlingly well-reported chronicle of an important period in our history ... The book is full of detail so rich that these players insist on their own veracity ... Luxenberg repeatedly manages to tell us stories that capture both the hope and the hopelessness that has been central to America\'s long argument about race ... Separate is an eye-opening journey through some the darkest passages and haunting corridors of American history.\
David W. Blight
PositiveNPR\"Blight succeeds in painting a portrait of Douglass that explains his monumental public achievements as well and his personal charms and shortcomings ... In the end, this lavish, sprawling biography — 854 pages including notes and acknowledgements — is mostly an extended meditation on the prized and peculiar American penchant for self-invention and re-invention ... Blight\'s opus manages to be both a celebration of a remarkable life and a sober reminder of the many ways in which our terrible times are shaped by those Douglass lived through.\
