Rough Crossings: Britain The Slaves And The American Revolution - Softcover

Simon Schama is a professor of art history and history at Columbia University. His award-winning books, translated into fifteen languages, include Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt’s Eyes, A History of Britain, The Power of Art, Rough Crossings, and most recently, The American Future: A History. His art columns for The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism, and his journalism has appeared regularly in The Guardian and the Financial Times, where he is a contributing editor. He has written and presented forty films for BBC2 on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics, and John Donne, and won an Emmy for The Power of Art.

Twenty percent of the two-and-a-half million colonists in America in 1776 were slaves and, therefore, not among the "all men created equal" by the Declaration of Independence. England offered freedom to those who would betray their owners and fight for King George. Many did. This book chronicles their astounding adventures. It also tells of the post-war attempts by English philanthropists to settle these unlikely Tories in Nova Scotia and then in Africa. Professor, critic, novelist, and historian Schama has also narrated award-winning TV shows for the BBC and American public television. Broadcasting has given his voice an astounding range and great force. The language that has made his books bestsellers is incandescent here. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine