Presents the life of the man who escaped slavery in Maryland to become a speaker and writer for abolition and the rights of African Americans and women, focusing on his childhood and youth as a slave.

"The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major...

In this book the author tells the tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war. Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, this work portrays Brown's uprising revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant...

"The story of the fascinating, fraught alliance among Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman-and how its breakup led to the success of America's most important social movement. In the crucial early years of the Abolition movement, the Boston branch of the cause seized upon the star power of the eloquent ex-slave Frederick Douglass to make its case for slaves' freedom. Journalist William Lloyd Garrison promoted emancipation...

See the difference, read #1 bestselling author Jane Smiley in Large Print
* About Large Print
All Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16-point typeface
Six years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, A Thousand Acres, and three years after her witty, acclaimed, and best-selling novel of academe, Moo, Jane Smiley once again demonstrates her extraordinary range and brilliance.
Her new novel, set in...

Perhaps the most powerful and influential black American of his time, Frederick Douglass, embodied the tumultuous social changes that transformed the United States during the nineteenth century. In a career of unprecedented breadth, Douglass rose from the oppression of his slave's birth to fame as an abolitionist.

Born a slave, Frederick Douglass grew up facing hunger, hard work, and terrible beatings. After overhearing that reading was the key to freedom, Frederick became determined to learn to read. Against all odds, he did learn and escaped from slavery. A powerful and inspirational speaker, Frederick spoke and wrote about his remarkable life and fought for the freedom and equal rights of African American men and women.

This biography, written by Booker T. Washington, one of most important post-Civil War African-American thinkers, is an account of the life and career of Frederick Douglass. The biographical account is set within a nation struggling to solve one of the most excruciating social problems that any modern people faced—slavery. This volume encompasses the experiences of Frederick Douglass as a slave and then as a public man, through the anti-slavery...

"Reluctant debutante Keziah Montgomery lives beneath the weighty expectations of her staunch Confederate family, forced to keep her epilepsy secret for fear of a scandal. As the tensions of the Civil War arrive on their doorstep in Savannah, Keziah sees little cause for balls and courting. Despite her discomfort, she cannot imagine an escape from her familial confines--until her old schoolmate Micah shows her a life-changing truth that sets her feet...

In Creek's Crossing, Pennsylvania, in the years before the Civil War, Dorothea Granger agrees to sew an unusual quilt to fulfill her uncle's deathbed request, realizing later that the quilt pattern contains an Underground Railroad map.