Here are 100 books that Rough Crossings fans have personally recommended if you like
Rough Crossings.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
We bought a television set when I was six; we were the first family in our neighborhood to have one. I watched Howdy Doody, Willie the Worm, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. A little later, there was an evangelical preacher named Oral Roberts calling on Jesus to heal people in wheelchairs and on crutches. That mesmerized me, the idea that belief could affect people so profoundly. Much later, I was drawn to study the impact of religion on attitudes toward slavery, which opened for me the subject of America’s long struggle with slavery and its long-term consequences. The books on this list have all given me needed perspectives and understanding.
I was entertained and enlightened by the story of Benjamin Lay, an eccentric, dramatic, and outrageous abolitionist figure I had never heard of before. His guerrilla political theater was something new on the American scene.
Many thought that slavery and its associated atrocities had driven him over the edge of sanity. Whether it did or did not is an open question. In either case, he was one of the fathers of anti-slavery activism.
The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man-a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. He performed public guerrilla theatre to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He wrote a fiery, controversial book against bondage that Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. He lived in a cave, made his own clothes, refused to consume anything produced by slave labour, championed animal rights, and embraced vegetarianism. He acted on his ideals to…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
We bought a television set when I was six; we were the first family in our neighborhood to have one. I watched Howdy Doody, Willie the Worm, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. A little later, there was an evangelical preacher named Oral Roberts calling on Jesus to heal people in wheelchairs and on crutches. That mesmerized me, the idea that belief could affect people so profoundly. Much later, I was drawn to study the impact of religion on attitudes toward slavery, which opened for me the subject of America’s long struggle with slavery and its long-term consequences. The books on this list have all given me needed perspectives and understanding.
I love history that is thoroughly researched yet told in a fluent, colloquial way. The best historians also have a knack for finding an arc that gives their subject the feel of drama, like a novel, but often better.
Adam Hochschild does these things. He’s a masterful storyteller.
Eighteenth-century Britain was the world's leading centre for the slave trade. Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild, author of the Duff Cooper prize-winning King Leopold's Ghost, charts the history of the moment everything changed.
In 1788, the slave trade flourishing across the British Empire, amassing wealth beyond measure. Bury the Chains is the remarkable story of the men who sought to end slavery and brought the issue to the heart of British political life.
Hochschild, lauded for his scholarly prowess and engrossing storytelling, transports us from London's bustling coffee houses to the West Indies' backbreaking sugar plantations. Exploring the roles…
We bought a television set when I was six; we were the first family in our neighborhood to have one. I watched Howdy Doody, Willie the Worm, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. A little later, there was an evangelical preacher named Oral Roberts calling on Jesus to heal people in wheelchairs and on crutches. That mesmerized me, the idea that belief could affect people so profoundly. Much later, I was drawn to study the impact of religion on attitudes toward slavery, which opened for me the subject of America’s long struggle with slavery and its long-term consequences. The books on this list have all given me needed perspectives and understanding.
I was not aware that Black nationalism's origins date back to the 18th Century and that it grew into a powerful movement in the early 19th century. Martin Robison Delany embodied the anger and frustration of free Blacks.
His story enlightened me about the depth of an attitude and feeling that existed at the origin of American slavery and still persists.
Decades before Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Malcolm X, Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) proclaimed his pride in being black, and demanded not only emancipation but independence for African Americans. Grandson of an African prince, son of a slave, Delany lived a life of singular achievement: the first African-American explorer to venture into the heart of Africa the publisher, editor, and writer of one of the first black newspapers in the U.S. one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School the first black to hold field grade rank of U.S. Army major during the Civil…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
We bought a television set when I was six; we were the first family in our neighborhood to have one. I watched Howdy Doody, Willie the Worm, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. A little later, there was an evangelical preacher named Oral Roberts calling on Jesus to heal people in wheelchairs and on crutches. That mesmerized me, the idea that belief could affect people so profoundly. Much later, I was drawn to study the impact of religion on attitudes toward slavery, which opened for me the subject of America’s long struggle with slavery and its long-term consequences. The books on this list have all given me needed perspectives and understanding.
The American Revolution’s conflict between its espousal of democratic ideals on the one hand and its embrace of slavery on the other created a debate about the country’s underlying purpose and intention. David Brion Davis was the dean of historians writing about slavery.
He addresses that question in depth here, including a portrayal of Thomas Jefferson. For me, this book stimulated a whole different way of thinking about our country’s origins and subsequent history.
The author explores the international impact and social significance of antislavery thought in a critical era of political and industrial revolution. He examines the implications and historical consequences of challenging the long-accepted institution of slavery. The study not only provides a comparative account of early antislavery movements, but also uses the controversies over slavery to analyse shifting attitudes towards labour, social order, political representation, and the authority of law and religion. The focus is on the Anglo-American experience, but Davis makes illuminating comparisons with the history of slavery in France and Latin America. The book also offers portraits of important…
I write about inequality in international development, American communities, environmental movements, and workplaces. I’ve been doing this reporting for over a decade. I’ve also worked in global health, an experience that has given me a first-hand glimpse into the depths and texture of inequality we have manufactured in our current world, including within the organizations and movements that purportedly challenge such global inequality. As a reader, I’m equally passionate about immersive nonfiction and fiction. I’ll dive into anything that’s driven by a good story.
I was particularly fascinated with this book because I lived in Sierra Leone for several years, and part of the book I wrote takes place there. But I think that anyone who is interested in the history of colonialism, West Africa, and/or modern capitalism and the ongoing effects of that history will find it interesting.
Sierra Leone is unique in that it was conceived of as a place for freed slaves; the British have long championed this as an example of one of their “good” colonial projects. Scanlan details how this “humanitarianism” entailed reformulating a population, particularly people’s ideas about money and debt, to instill specific notions about what it meant to be “civilized” that still reverberate today.
A history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone and how the British used its success to justify colonialism in Africa
British anti-slavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact profitable, militarily useful, and crucial to the expansion of British power in West Africa. After the slave trade was abolished, anti-slavery activists in England profited, colonial officials in Freetown, Sierra Leone, relied on former slaves as soldiers and as cheap labor, and the British armed forces conscripted former slaves to fight in the West…
I love to write stories about people who lived during pivotal times in history. I’m intrigued by what people were thinking and why they thought that way. People, just like us now, were a product of their time and circumstance. They had strong opinions about the issues of the day, and debated fiercely. It’s these conversations and opinions that help me make the past come alive. Being born and raised in Sweden, and having been a New Yorker for thirty years, I was awarded the 2021 Swedish Women’s Educational Association (SWEA) New York’s Scholarship for the artistic promotion of Swedish culture and history in New York.
Someone Knows My Name, is a poignant portrayal of the horrors of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the inhuman strength and perseverance of a woman who survived it.
As a writer and historian, I love when I find a writer who can put themselves inside the mind of a person from an earlier time. Lawrence Hill truly does, especially the way he describes how alien the new world was for someone who came from a different culture. How every detail is new, and how heart-wrenching it is to be torn from everything you know.
Kidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship and prejudice of the new colony prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people. It is a story that no listener, and no reader, will…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Since I first visited Africa in 2004 I’ve found it difficult to tear myself away. I’ve lived in South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, and Sudan and travelled in all corners of the continent. I’ve participated in a revolution, hung out with the illegal fishermen of Lake Victoria, been cursed—and protected—by witch doctors, and learned Swahili. I’ve also read extensively about the place, written three books about it, and broadcast from it for the BBC World Service. In my other life I research and write about international development for universities and global organisations. This too has a focus on Africa.
This isn’t strictly a travel book—it’s about how the author’s father was brought to his knees and finally executed by the Sierra Leonean dictator Siaka Stevens—but it brilliantly conveys how life and politics work in West Africa and is therefore a must-read if you’re thinking about travelling to the region or want to know more about its post-colonial trajectory.
An extremely moving story, its portrayal of the horror of Stevens’ regime amid the beauty of Sierra Leone encapsulates the fascination of a part of Africa few tourists visit. Tragically, as I discuss in my book, the demise of Stevens’ regime wasn’t the end of Sierra Leone’s troubles.
Praised as “a shining example of what autobiography can be: harrowing, illuminating and thoughtful” (USA Today), Aminatta Forna’s intensely personal history is a passionate and vivid account of an idyllic childhood which became the stuff of nightmare. As a child she witnessed the upheavals of post-colonial Africa, danger, flight, the bitterness or exile in Britain and the terrible consequences of her dissident father’s stand against tyranny.
Mohamed Forna was a man of unimpeachable integrity and enchanting charisma. As Sierra Leone faced its future as a fledgling democracy, he was a new star in the political firmament, a man who had…
I am a social scientist who has been doing fieldwork and research in Africa since 1999. For me, there’s no more fascinating part of the planet – Africa is the cradle of civilization, more diverse than anywhere else and culturally and institutionally vibrant and creative. I have worked in Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Zimbabwe investigating the determinants of political institutions and economic prosperity. I have taught courses on Africa at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of Ghana at Legon and this summer the University of Nigeria in Nsukka.
African civil wars are not about ethnicity, diamonds, or foreign aid. They are genuine political conflicts about how society is to be organized, created by grievances and political marginalization and also deeply embedded in local cultures. As such, they stem from the same roots as the English Civil War of the 1640s or the American Revolutionary War of the 1770s-1780s. This is all revealed in this brilliant book on the Sierra Leone civil war.
Do small wars in Africa manifest a 'new barbarism'? What appears as random, anarchic violence is no such thing. The terrifying military methods of of Sierra Leone's soldiers may not fir conventional western models of warfare,but they are rational and effective nonetheless. The war must be understood partly as a 'performance', in which techniques of terror compensate for lack of equipment.
PAUL RICHARDS is Professor of Technology and Agrarian Development, Wageningen University
Published in association with the International African Institute
Growing up outside London in the 1980s and 1990s, I learned almost nothing about the American Revolution. After all, who wants to teach schoolchildren that their nation once fought a war against farmers with muskets—and lost? I didn’t discover the subject until senior year of college, but when I did, it turned my life upside down. Long story short, I now teach the Revolution every semester to college students in the United States. So I’ve been reading hungrily about the topic for decades now—trying to catch up on lost time—and these books are the five that have convinced me that America’s founding fight was actually a world war in all but name.
I love Epic Journeys of Freedom because the Australian historian Cassandra Pybus follows some of the most extraordinary lives I’ve ever encountered in history—and she tracks them to the ends of the earth.
The scope of this book is just breathtaking. Cassandra traces the odyssey of Black Americans like Harry Washington, who escaped slavery (at George Washington’s Mount Vernon), fought for their freedom, and found their way first to British Canada and eventually to Sierra Leone in West Africa.
If you want to see why historians love their jobs—how we get to be both detective and time traveler then this is the book for you.
Cassandra Pybus adds greatly to the work of [previous] scholars by insisting that slaves stand at the center of their own history . . . Her 'biographies' of flight expose the dangers that escape entailed and the courage it took to risk all for freedom. Only by measuring those dangers can the exhilaration of success be comprehended and the unspeakable misery of failure be appreciated.--Ira Berlin, from the Foreword
During the American Revolution, thousands of slaves fled their masters to find freedom with the British. Epic Journeys of Freedom is the astounding story of these runaways and the lives they…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am at heart a storyteller, with a special interest in archiving and weaving the tales of my people to give you insight into a culture that is quite different from yours. Like an archaeologist digging a forgotten world, I want to bring these stories to life in the form of words. After a long day of animal herding and chores, my family and I would sit by the fire in a vast, open desert covered in blackness, and share century-old stories. My big ears consumed these stories like a thirsty desert after a long drought, so I could one day share this library of wisdom with others.
This memoir captures the journey of child soldiers during the civil war in Sierra Leone, and shows how once-innocent children with ordinary lives became killing machines in the hands of a ruthless rebel leader. Beah doesn't shy away from the gruesomeness of civil war, but there is beauty in how he weaves this memoir that reads like a novel. Though I am not usually a fan of books with a lot of violence, I was drawn to this one and could not put it down. I believe history is best learned from those who have first-hand experience. This is a one-of-a-kind book and to Beah’s credit, well-written as well.
This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this…
