In this empathetic, deeply researched, and fluently told biography, Blight tells the story of one of our greatest Americans. An unstinting thinker, an irresistible performer (what I would pay for a video recording of one of his early lectures), and a writer of incredible power, Douglass might have been a Milton or a Shakespeare if he had lived in another time and place. But, born into mortal danger and a world gripped by moral crisis, he became greater than either.