H. W. Brands - The Zealot and the Emancipator Virtual Event
In his new book, gifted storyteller and Pulitzer-nominated historian H. W. Brands narrates the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln—two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin.
The Atlanta History Center welcomes the author for a virtual discussion of “The Zealot and the Emancipator” with GBP’s Virginia Prescott.
This event is free and open to the public. Join the event via the link below.
A Cappella Books will have signed copies of “The Zealot and the Emancipator” available after the event. Pre-order via the link below. At checkout, choose between the local delivery, curbside pick-up, or shipping options. For zip codes not listed in the above banner, select curbside pick-up or USPS shipping.
About the Book
“The Zealot and the Emancipator” tells the story of the epic struggle over slavery, with clear parallels to our current moment, Brands offers a dual portrait of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, two men with radically different views on how moral people must respond to our democracy’s most extreme injustice: by incremental change within the system? Or by radical upheaval?
When the book opens in the mid-nineteenth century, although abolitionists had been working peacefully to end slavery for decades, the most they had achieved was containing its spread in the expanding republic. Then in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act reversed even that, opening two new states to slavery.
New Englander John Brown was a charismatic and deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to destroy slavery by any means—including the sword. Meanwhile in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was an ambitious lawyer and failed politician who believed that slavery, while surely a sin, was guaranteed in the Constitution. The only way to fight it was by political means.
As our contemporary political and social divisiveness increasingly seems too vast for politics-as-usual to resolve, master storyteller H. W. Brands narrates with reverberating relevance—and in thrilling fashion—how two men confronted America’s gravest scourge in the moments before the nation’s darkest hour.
About the Author
H. W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times bestselling author, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for “The First American” and “Traitor to His Class.”
