Professor Ed Larson's Book, "American Inheritance," Reviewed in New York Times and Wall Street Journal

Professor Edward J. Larson's recently published book, American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795, is reviewed in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 

Excerpt from the New York Times Book Review, "Can the Country Come to Terms With Its Original Sin?"

In Edward J. Larson’s “American Inheritance,” the Pulitzer-winning historian attempts to insert reason into a passionate public conversation.

Our own age has been hard on both reason and history. Too often the past has been deployed to fight the ideological wars of the moment, a tendency that reduces history to ammunition. And so Edward J. Larson’s “American Inheritance” is a welcome addition to a public conversation, in the wake of The New York Times’s 1619 Project, that has largely produced more heat than light.

The complete review may be found at New York Times (subscription may be required).

Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal Book Review, "'American Inheritance' Review: How Bondage Shadowed Freedom"

Mr. Larson, a Pepperdine University historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for a book on the 1925 Scopes trial, submits enough evidence in his newest work to indict almost all the Southern (and some Northern) Founders for, if nothing else, insensitivity to the human beings they held in chains while rebelling against the British for enslaving the American colonies.

One by one, not only the much-criticized Thomas Jefferson but also James Madison, Patrick Henry and even Benjamin Franklin stand accused of indifference, equivocation or dehumanizing racism as they articulate a vision of American freedom with slavery intact and later devise a constitutional government designed in part to protect the institution from federal interference.

The complete review may be found at Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required).

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