This harrowing true story of Solomon Northup was the basis for the Academy Award-winning film 12 Years a Slave. In it, he takes the reader on an unforgettable journey from the slave markets in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans to the major cotton and sugar plantations in Louisiana.
Born and raised a freeman in New York, with a house, a loving wife and two children, Northup was offered a short-term engagement as a violinist in Washington D.C. where he was tricked, drugged and sold into slavery in the deep south.
Kept in bondage in Louisiana for 12 years, enduring backbreaking labor, unimaginable violence, and inhumane treatment at the hands of cruel masters, Northup was finally able to write to friends and family in New York, who succeeded in securing his release.
This memoir is a shocking portrait of America''s most insidious institution and is even more disturbing in print than in the film. Published shortly after Harriet Beecher Stowe''s abolitionist classic Uncle Tom''s Cabin, Northup''s memoir became a bestseller in 1853.
With its eloquent depiction of life before and after bondage, this story of his extraordinary journey shows just how the resiliency of hope and the strong human spirit can conquer even the most horrible of circumstances.
"Now I had approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the thick darkness whereof I was soon to disappear, thenceforward to be hidden from the eyes of all my kindred, and shut out from the sweet light of liberty, for many a weary year."< -Solomon Northup
Industry Reviews
A guide offers advice on achieving success in business and life. In his book, Proctor (It's Not About the Money, 2018) invites readers to imagine traveling around the world and talking to the wealthiest, happiest people. If they asked all these folks the same question--what is the key to your success?--their answers would always boil down to the same things. The author then asks: Wouldn't you like to know what those things are? Proctor lays out those answers in his manual, broken down into 12 "principles" grouped around core ideas. The author opens by assuring his readers that they were born with the keys to success and only need to realize that in order to begin living their best lives. "Misunderstanding this part keeps the masses in the foothills," he writes, "wandering aimlessly, never climbing their mountains, frequently frustrated, often angry, and too often miserably disappointed with themselves and their accomplishments." This delineation between winners and losers runs throughout the work, with Proctor asserting that "decision makers go to the top, and those who do not make decisions seem to go nowhere." He raises several key general concepts, like "goals," "persistence," and "creativity," and in each case quotes from business inspiration standards like Winston Churchill and delivers wide-reaching insights and encouragements. Some of these will strike longtime readers of business books as very familiar--things like "risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing" and "you cannot escape from a prison if you do not know you are in one." Less familiar--and more questionable--are much broader claims like "We are all spiritual beings. There is no one person who has more power, more knowledge or access to greater resources than any other person." Or "I am responsible for my life, for my feelings, and for every result I get." These extravagant contentions are perhaps not out of line with a book that asserts: "You are one with the infinite." An inspirational--and more than a little grandiose--series of business world insights.
