Mr. Book just finished American Slavery, American Freedom, by Edmund S. Morgan.
This book is considered a classic in the field, so I was expecting much more. I was very disappointed. I spent most of the book wondering how much longer do I have to do before I get to the interesting parts.
This book purports to be about American slavery and American freedom. But, there is surprisingly little substantive discussions about either slavery or freedom for most of the book. It is instead mostly about the early decades of Virginia and their economic situation.
I was expecting a book about the hypocrisy (a more accurate term than “paradox”) of the claims of freedom by a slave-owning society. I was expecting much more of the book to be about the founding generation and the 18th century. I did not enjoy the fact that almost the entire book was about the 17th century instead.
I give this book a D. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a D equates to 1 star. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
I had added this book to my library at Audible, since it was one of the books available for free. I have just deleted it that library. There is no need for me to waste my time again on this one.
This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.
Mr. Book originally finished reading this on August 1, 2024.
