What Are You Looking Forward to Reading, Martha A. Sandweiss?
by David Haglund, Critical Mass Blog| Aug-04-2010
" ...This summer I am looking forward to reading the bound galleys of two books forthcoming in fall 2010. For years, I have heard these authors talk about their struggles with the evidence, and now I get to see what they’ve done with it. Virginia Scharff’s The Women Jefferson Loved takes a fresh look at the facts hidden in plain sight to reimagine the Founding Father as a man caught up by the demands of love and the pull of family tragedy. Ann Fabian’s The Skull Collectors: Race, Science and America’s Unburied Dead unravels the improbable story of how and why American scientists collected human heads for the nation’s museums. But even as I read new history, I am reading other sorts of nonfiction and novels at breakneck summer speed, trying to get the sounds of other sorts of storytelling in my head. Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains and Joan Didion’s Where I Was From top my to-read nonfiction list and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn are next up for fiction. ...."
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National Book Critics Circle finalist.
“Passing Strange tells an astounding true story that would beggar most novelists’ imaginations… A fine, mesmerizing account.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“[Sandweiss is] a curious, talented writer… she tells [Clarence King’s story] with a scholar’s rigor and a storyteller’s verve… A sophisticated work of scholarship.” —Columbia Journalism Review
“Passing Strange combines remarkable detective work, riveting storytelling, and the enduring question of race to fashion a most unusual but very American family saga about a famous white man and a heretofore unknown black woman. This book is a stunning achievement and example of just how deeply race is woven into our history, our imaginations, and our lives. Ada Copeland, who became a Todd, and then a King, rescued from obscurity by a talented historian, steals the show.” —David W. Blight, Yale University, and author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation
“Elaborate and incredible… Remarkable.” —Bookpage
“Sandweiss serves a delicious brew of public accomplishment and domestic intrigue… Fascinating.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“One of the best-known men of his time crosses the racial divide—in reverse. As Sandweiss notes in this sturdy work, which blends elements of social and intellectual history with biography, thousands of light-skinned blacks in that era tried to pass for white, but the number of those who did the opposite must have been tiny. An intriguing look at long-held secrets.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Although Passing Strange reads like a suspenseful novel, it introduces us to a real American hero who lived a fascinating life on both sides of the color line. Sandweiss gives us a great lesson in American history that spans three generations.” —Lawrence Otis Graham, author of Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class
