Review Summaries

• Its vivid reconstruction and its link between liberty and slavery are widely praised, though some readers find the density of detail heavy.

Reviews

• Well researched, disturbing, engaging.

  I was amazed at how indepth and involved this history was. Very interesting, engaging and also very disturbing.

• Good For History Lovers

  I doubt anyone who does not want to read a true historical book with a lot of facts but not as exciting as a non-fiction novel will enjoy this. I liked it because I learned a lot of things about New York that I was really surprised to read. Seems my beloved New York had a pretty bloody, violent history towards slaves and Catholics and some others the leaders and people did not like. I didn't realize the punishments of the day were just as bad, if not worse, than those of the Salem Witch hunt days. Beware, some of the content may turn your stomach.

• Search for Scapegoats

  Jill Lepore's "New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan" is a valuable and admirable examination of one of the darkest episodes in New York's history: the so-called slave rebellion of 1741 and the brutal vengeance that was extracted. Professor Lepore's painstaking research confronts the reader with a terrible conclusion: even the most respectable of people in society will consent to the deaths of human beings, based on even the tiniest shreds of evidence. Focusing primarily on the actions of Daniel Horsmanden, the City's Recorder, Lepore provides the reader with a background on the attitudes of New York's whites toward their slaves. She makes clear that Gotham was neither the first nor only city to have witnessed slave uprisings. (It had suffered a similar uprising a couple of decades earlier.) But the events of 1741 were unique for several reasons: --the shifting finger-pointing at various groups; --the inconsistency of Mary Burton's testimony, which essentially was the case against several slaves;and --Horsmanden's bizarre behavior toward Mary Burton. Admittedly, I've only superficially studied this dark time in New York's history, so I was shocked to learn that there were actually several "conspiracies": the Negro Plot, Hughson's Plot, the Spanish Plot, the Roman Plot, etc. Each plot was hatched depending on who confessed to what. Worst of all, the white population of New York--fueled by racism, xenophobia, paranoia, and, not the least of all, bloodlust--went right along with it. And, with the exception of an intriguing anonymous letter from Massachussetts, it seems the rest of the colonies went along with it, too. While Horsmanden is just short of villified in this book, he is not alone in his culpability. Professor Lapore's "New York Burning" will disturb many readers. The accounts of the slaves and the few whites burning, hanging, begging, and praying are graphic and heartbreaking. Still, this in an incredibly important book for anyone interested in the history of our nation and/or the all-too-tragic fragility of race relations in America. For this, Professor Lapore deserves our appreciation

• Spectacular Albeit Unknown History of Race Relations

  This is a great piece of historiography about something few know about at all --- slavery in New York City in the 18th century. How about a slave "rebellion" in New York City, how about more people burned at the stake than in the Salem witchcraft trials, how about dark byways and highways of old New York, barely transformed from its days as New Amsterdam, dark plots in dank places, shrill frightened tyrants overreacting with bloody retribution, burned ruins of an early African American village in Central Park? One cannot make up this stuff, it is too real so it must be history at its best. And written by one of our premier authors of history, a woman who makes our history live in The New Yorker to the acclaim of many, and yet whose best book, this one, is still too little known. If you appreciate Harry Truman's remark that the only new thing under the Sun is the history you haven't read, then this is one to curl up with and marvel at; a great way to spend a rainy day or a dark night.

• Good, but not great.

  Kudos to Lepore for delving into an important, little known subject, which she does better than most historians. At times, however, I think she felt the need to put every little piece of information she got into the book. It was way too long. Some good research, but she has done better. Still, worth checking out. I like to think I know American history, but I know nothing about this awful chapter.

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