Reviews
"Nicholas Lemann has written a book that is essential to any full understanding of how racial hatred, terrorism, and lies have shaped our history, our culture, and our deepest national neuroses." --Roger Wilkins, George Mason University ""Redemption" is as brilliantly written as the white South's bloody reversal of the Civil War's verdict was grimly effective. In this enraging, absorbing account of the post-war rebirth of white supremacy and black enslavement, Nicholas Lemann proves that Faulkner was right: the past's dark shadows haunt us yet." --Hodding Carter III "It is no secret that emancipation did not mark an end to the suffering of African Americans in the South. Building on the major historical studies of Reconstruction by scholars such as John Hope Franklin and Eric Foner, Nicholas Lemann's gripping account of anti-black hatred and violence in Reconstruction-era Mississippi dramatizes these struggles and brings the history of this roiling period front and center, where it belongs." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University "It is no surprise that Nick Lemann, with his enormous skills as a writer, has taken one of the least understood and most manipulated moments in our history and redeemed it--and the truth--for the rest of us. Now, thanks to his superb storytelling, some of the fog around this dark chapter has lifted." --Ken Burns "Short and concise, Nicholas Lemann's "Redemption" is one of the very best accounts of Reconstruction I've ever read. Focusing on the Southern 'Redeemers'' slaughter of innocent blacks as well as the hopes and trials of Adelbert Ames, the heroic Civil War general who became governor of Mississippi, Lemann succeeds in showing that the defeatof Reconstruction was in many ways 'the last battle of the Civil War, ' a battle won of course by the South." --David Brion Davis, Yale University Praise for "The Big Test: " "A dazzling writer . . . Mr. Lemann makes this tale immensely readable." --Dan Seligman, "The Wall Street Journal" "A swaggering good tale peopled with colorful characters, from the testmakers who created the SAT in the 1920's to the students who used it 40 years later to launch themselves as Lemann's Mandarins." --Gerald W. Bracey, "The Washington Post", "It is no surprise that Nick Lemann, with his enormous skills as a writer, has taken one of the least understood and most manipulated moments in our history and redeemed it--and the truth--for the rest of us. Now, thanks to his superb storytelling, some of the fog around this dark chapter has lifted." --Ken Burns "Short and concise, Nicholas Lemann's "Redemption" is one of the very best accounts of Reconstruction I've ever read. Focusing on the Southern 'Redeemers'' slaughter of innocent blacks as well as the hopes and trials of Adelbert Ames, the heroic Civil War general who became governor of Mississippi, Lemann succeeds in showing that the defeat of Reconstruction was in many ways 'the last battle of the Civil War, ' a battle won of course by the South." --David Brion Davis, Yale University Praise for "The Big Test: " "A dazzling writer . . . Mr. Lemann makes this tale immensely readable." --Dan Seligman, "The Wall Street Journal" "A swaggering good tale peopled with colorful characters, from the testmakers who created the SAT in the 1920's to the students who used it 40 years later to launch themselves as Lemann's Mandarins." --Gerald W. Bracey, "The Washington Post", "It is no secret that emancipation did not mark an end to the suffering of African Americans in the South. Building on the major historical studies of Reconstruction by scholars such as John Hope Franklin and Eric Foner, Nicholas Lemann's gripping account of anti-black hatred and violence in Reconstruction-era Mississippi dramatizes these struggles and brings the history of this roiling period front and center, where it belongs." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University "It is no surprise that Nick Lemann, with his enormous skills as a writer, has taken one of the least understood and most manipulated moments in our history and redeemed it--and the truth--for the rest of us. Now, thanks to his superb storytelling, some of the fog around this dark chapter has lifted." --Ken Burns "Short and concise, Nicholas Lemann's "Redemption" is one of the very best accounts of Reconstruction I've ever read. Focusing on the Southern 'Redeemers'' slaughter of innocent blacks as well as the hopes and trials of Adelbert Ames, the heroic Civil War general who became governor of Mississippi, Lemann succeeds in showing that the defeat of Reconstruction was in many ways 'the last battle of the Civil War, ' a battle won of course by the South." --David Brion Davis, Yale University Praise for "The Big Test: " "A dazzling writer . . . Mr. Lemann makes this tale immensely readable." --Dan Seligman, "The Wall Street Journal" "A swaggering good tale peopled with colorful characters, from the testmakers who created the SAT in the 1920's to the students who used it 40 years later to launch themselves as Lemann's Mandarins." --Gerald W. Bracey, "The Washington Post", "Short and concise, Nicholas Lemann's "Redemption" is one of the very best accounts of Reconstruction I've ever read. Focusing on the Southern 'Redeemers'' slaughter of innocent blacks as well as the hopes and trials of Adelbert Ames, the heroic Civil War general who became governor of Mississippi, Lemann succeeds in showing that the defeat of Reconstruction was in many ways 'the last battle of the Civil War, ' a battle won of course by the South." --David Brion Davis, Yale University Praise for "The Big Test: " "A dazzling writer . . . Mr. Lemann makes this tale immensely readable." --Dan Seligman, "The Wall Street Journal" "A swaggering good tale peopled with colorful characters, from the testmakers who created the SAT in the 1920's to the students who used it 40 years later to launch themselves as Lemann's Mandarins." --Gerald W. Bracey, "The Washington Post", Praise for "The Big Test: "A dazzling writer . . . Mr. Lemann makes this tale immensely readable." --Dan Seligman, "The Wall Street Journal "A swaggering good tale peopled with colorful characters, from the testmakers who created the SAT in the 1920's to the students who used it 40 years later to launch themselves as Lemann's Mandarins." --Gerald W. Bracey, "The Washington Post
