Review: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you enjoy Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman, this will be a fun listen. They are a funny couple. This is a biography of sorts of their relationship and marriage. As odd as they are, they are a pretty normal couple who obviously adore each other and have fun taking pictures, working puzzles, and singing. They discuss several topics from their family, dating, religion, sex, and puzzles. If you get the book version, whether a physical or e-reader version, you’ll get to see a bunch of fun pictures. In the audio version, they will describe the pictures for you in detail. I listened to the audio while following along on my Kindle.

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Review: Stolen Childhood, Second Edition: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America

Stolen Childhood, Second Edition: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America by Wilma King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a very well researched book that follows the life of a slave from the cradle to the grave. Wilma King focuses the bulk of her book on the lost innocence of a childhood for children in bondage in the antebellum south. King utilizes a lot of data including slave narratives, letters, and diaries to piece together the lifecycle of a slave. She draws a picture of a slave's family unit and the circumstances surrounding their bondage, whether they were born into slavery or captured and sold into slavery. She then details the care of a baby and their aging into a toddler that suddenly has chores and light work around the masters home and slave quarters. Many slaves take their babies into the fields with them to play in nearby areas under the watchful eye of their mother. Around the age of 10, children begin back-breaking work in the fields with little leisure time in the evenings and weekends. The second half of the book moves to education (or lack thereof) and the quest for freedom, whether from running away, manumission or eventually for some, emancipation.

I felt this was a very good look at the life of a slave and liked the focus on children. At about the half-way mark, as the topic of education was brought up, I felt that the author lost their focus on a slave's childhood. King certainly mentions how each topic affected children, but their childhood was no longer the true focus, rather it was on the topics and how they affected the entire slave community. I did not feel that the author really brought her thesis full circle to revisit the stolen childhood of a slave. However, this is still a book worthy of the read. It was too short to get too dense, but the statistics were at times less important to the intended thesis and could have been relegated to an appendix or endnote. The first half is quite readable, the second half, skimmable.

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Review: When I Was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection

When I Was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection by Norman R. Yetman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This short book is a collection of slave narratives gathered through interviews during the 1930s by interviewers of the WPA's Federal Writers' Project. There are a total of 34 narratives from slaves throughout the south. Each tells his or her own story that includes the moment when they learned they had been emancipated. They all lived a hard life. Some had more fond memories of their family and even their master's family, but most show the cruel treatment they endured and the lack of life-sustaining provisions, such as food, clothes, and rest.

What I found interesting was the age of all of these slaves. For them to have lived without so many needs being met, with a lack of decent food, they all lived to at least their late 80s and even into the 100s. Obviously, these are resilient people. It makes you wonder what they could have accomplished in life if circumstances were different.

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Review: We Can Do It: The Troubled Story of School Desegregation in Alachua County, Florida

We Can Do It: The Troubled Story of School Desegregation in Alachua County, Florida by Michael T. Gengler
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a very long and exhaustive look at the equally long and exhaustive work to desegregate the schools in Alachua County, Florida in the late 60s and early 70s. Deeply segregated until that time, Alachua County, Florida which includes Gainesville, had several schools with quite a bit of history. Many people, including students in both white and black schools, did not want to integrate. There were many obstacles that the community faced to become a unitary school system. Not only did the students need to integrate, but teachers and administrators too. Some schools were forced to close and new schools were added. There were protests, riots, and eventually assimilation. It was quite an undertaking but as the students once stated: "We Can Do It."

This was an interesting look at the challenges one community faced to integrate. Many faced the same challenges throughout the south in the mid-20th century. This is a good book, a good case study for scholars of Civil Rights and those interested in the process to integrate southern schools. I'm glad I read it but it was very long. I felt the author went on a few tangents that were unnecessary, over-quoted sources, and could have condensed a lot and still offered an accurate portrait of the issues that were faced in Alachua County.

I received this book gratis through Goodreads Giveaways.

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