This is part 1 of the story (in 5 parts, plus one digression) of a white man who tried to glue together his life, sliced…
The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, tells a story so rich and intricate, so visionary, it’s impossible to describe except in the flattest terms. The…
My article on Thomas Morris Chester, Black news correspondant in the Civil War, is posted at New York Times: Disunion. A few words (that didn’t fit…
Historians writing about General Benjamin Butler love to point out his not-ready-for-Hollywood personal appearance. “His features were brutish,” Adam Goodheart says in 1861, adding a…
“A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. Virginia Road, and a Black Driver”…. Dickens, 1842, on the way from DC to Richmond. Today Dickens’ description…