A new intellectual and political perspective on the emergence of freedom in the modern world ... A powerful history of political thought and on-the-ground resistance—in many forms, always against seemingly insurmountable odds—that stretched across continents and centuries.
An ambitious project ... Gibson finds surprisingly little to say about the most common types of resistance by enslaved people ... Amid swiftly drawn sketches involving an ever-changing cast of characters, in chapters with cryptic single-word titles such as 'Liberation', 'Lashings' and 'Repeat', it is difficult to detect any clear explanation for the changes sweeping her grand historical landscape.
