Books like Taking Liberty — picked by fans

This may be weird, but stay with me: I’m fascinated by the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793. The disease and its aftermath shaped modern-day Philadelphia. 

Anderson’s story centers on 16-year-old Matty. When residents of means, including George Washington and his cabinet, fled crowded downtown Philadelphia, Matty could not. I felt her fear and confusion when it seemed like the epidemic would never end. I was frustrated with her when her plans to get away went awry.

We modern readers know that the fever, spread by mosquitoes, would stop being a problem in November when it was too cold for the insects to survive. Those living in the moment did not. 

I love learning new things about people, places, and things I think I know everything about.

For example, I live in Philadelphia, a city I call “freaky for Franklin,” but I still learned more about good ol’ Ben in this book. In fact, every chapter of this book contained at least one “I never knew that! That’s so cool!” moment.

The book covers the city’s 300+ years in existence, but there are plenty of stories about people and places crucial to the nation’s founding. The book’s format makes it easy to skip around to subjects you’re most interested in the moment.

Jim Murphy is a respected historian with a seemingly endless supply of new historical information.

I always ask people if they know about any of the nation’s “founding mothers.” Most do not, and those who have some insights usually speak about these women as one-dimensional characters.

Betsy Ross = Flag. Dolley Madison = Ice cream (This, although Dolly Madison, the ice cream company founded in the 20th century, is not related to Dolley Madison, the influential wife of President James Madison in the early 19th century.)

I loved how this book, a collection of profiles of Colonial women, presents them as real people with their own ideas and strengths and spheres of influence.

Abigail Adams famously warned her husband, John, to “remember the ladies” while drafting laws for the United States. Betsy Ross did some important sewing, yes, but also ran a successful upholstery business and was such an ardent supporter of the patriot movement that she was dubbed “the little rebel.” Dolley Madison set… show more.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book.

Author Walter Isaacson, known for his biographies of famous people including Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci, devotes the entire work to analyzing the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. 

Isaacson notes how small changes to the document—written by Thomas Jefferson and edited by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams—impacted the overall work: Jefferson originally used “sacred” to define “unalienable rights.” Franklin changed it to “self-evident,” removing religion from the founding formula.

I loved this historical work about the real-life story of Ellen Craft, a young slave with a light complexion who escapes from the South with her partner, William, a slave of a darker complexion. The difficult voyage on a boat going north in which Ellen, who is impersonating a young white master traveling with his male slave, must converse with the white men on board as though she were one of them kept me in a state of high anxiety.

I prayed that she would succeed, agonizing over every difficult moment that could have aroused suspicions, internalizing the heroine’s terror and resolve. I loved the gripping prose and psychological insight of this author who has restored the voice of a remarkable woman who played an important role in the abolitionist movement. 

I was intrigued by this book. John Randolph, the madman of the title, was well known to me as the fiery and erratic defender of slavery, representing antebellum Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was sometimes for abolition and sometimes not. Who knew that this mostly unrepentant white slaveholder in his contested will freed hundreds of the enslaved?

But not so fast, I learned. There was much more to the story than a simple gesture of humanity granted posthumously. There was much litigation over his true intentions. And what would happen to those he manumitted once they resettled in the free state of Ohio? I found this biography full of complexity, nuance, and surprises. I loved this book—a largely unknown story well told. 

I’ve loved Andre Brink’s books ever since I discovered them in my late teens. He’s a celebrated South African author of protest literature, and his historical fiction, Philida, is one of my favourites. 

It’s a tender and yet powerful story about a woman born into slavery to a white family, who becomes the mother of four children by the son of her master. Although it reveals the sordid past of the country, much of Philida’s power lies in how personal it is.

I love how nuanced and intimate the story is and how one woman’s story says so much.

This new take on radical Black abolitionist Nat Turner surprised—and enlightened me. If you’ve always thought of Turner as no more than a violent insurrectionist hellbent on the massacre of whites in southside Virginia, think again. There was much more to him, I learned in this out-of-the-box biography of the man both vilified and idolized since the infamous 1831 killing spree.

He was immortalized in the fictionized best-seller Nat Turner’s Rebellion, but this new take shows that truth can be stranger than fiction. I learned that Turner, rather than a revolutionary motivated solely by hate, drew heavily on the Old Testament and other religious sources as he and his followers terrorized and murdered in what they deemed to be a righteous cause.      

In the 18th century, more than 12 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the Americas via the notorious Middle Passage. This book gave me an inside understanding of how the slave trade was stopped and vivid descriptions of the individuals who played leading roles.

My mind was also expanded with new knowledge about the extraordinary experience of slaves during the American Revolution. I loved the exciting and dramatic language that put me in the middle of the action.   

Understandably even grumpier than Twain, for the most part, these Americans were held captive by Barbary “pirates” in North Africa and lived to tell about it. Their stories really got me interested in America’s interaction with North Africa on the southern edge of the Mediterranean. 

They provide lots of drama, with ship captures, dark dungeons, descriptions of their Muslim captors, daily life in North Africa, horrific torture, and more. Needless to say, some of it has to be taken with a grain of salt, but there’s a good reason many of these accounts were bestsellers when originally published.