On Juneteenth [Hardcover]

It is more than a small pleasure to see that Black historians who have been engaged in deep archival research for decades continue to produce field-changing work that ought to be the center of any national debate about how Americans reckon with our racial past. In In a series of short, moving essays, [Gordon-Reed] explores the long road to June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in Texas, the state where Gordon-Reed was born and raised.... No matter what shes looking at, Gordon-Reed pries open this space between the abstract and particular.... One of the things that makes this slender book stand out is Gordon-Reeds ability to combine clarity with subtlety, elegantly carving a path between competing positions, instead of doing as too many of us do in this age of hepped-up social-media provocations by simply reacting to them. In The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian interweaves her personal, trailblazing history with that of her home state to pierce many of the false narratives we learned as children about the countrys treatment of African Americans.... Gordon-Reed offers a timely history lesson. She does so with beautiful prose, breathtaking stories and painful memories.... Gordon-Reeds literary gift is the ability to research and write about subjects with broadly accepted stories in a convincing way that allows readers to consider other perspectives. Gordon-Reed offers a book that is both profound and personal in its exploration of the ways history shapes our lives and becomes distorted and reinvigorated over time. [Gordon-Reed's] academic training tempers that lifelong sense of Texas exceptionalism as she details with clear-eyed detachment yet enduring affection the Lone Star States outsized impact on the nation.... The beauty of history, Gordon-Reed argues, of knowing what didnt happen as well as what did, is that it reminds us of what is yet possible.... This consummate historian suggests that we neither remel+