Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated landmark book tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama.

Informed by the latest, sometimes provocative scholarship and including more than seven hundred images—ancient maps, fine art, documents, photographs, cartoons, posters—Life Upon These Shores focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the signal achievements of people famous and obscure. Gates takes us from the sixteenth century through the ordeal of slavery, from the Civil War and Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era and the Great Migration; from the civil rights and black nationalist movements through the age of hip-hop to the Joshua generation. By documenting and illuminating the sheer diversity of African American involvement in American history, society, politics, and culture, Gates bracingly disabuses us of the presumption of a single “black experience.”

Life Upon These Shores is a book of major importance, a breathtaking tour de force of the historical imagination.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, African American, American History, Social Justice, Anti Racist

512 pages, Hardcover

First published November 22, 2011

About the author

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies.

Reviews

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s "Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008" is a comprehensive, thorough, well-illustrated summary of African American history from colonial times to the present. It's a large volume, not the type of book a reader can carry around with them and read, but is an excellent resource for students or history buffs. It is organized well with a wealth of information, photographs, illustrations, etc. I would definitely recommend this volume for a reference library or for history majors and others who are interested in the genre.

[Chris Leuchtenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This beautifully illustrated, episodic history of African Americans has separate, one or two-page sections on people, incidents and organizations important to this history. I found it to be eye-opening, disillusioning, uplifting, sad and hopeful all at the same time. Instead of focusing on the miseries suffered by African Americans, although that can't be missed, Gates presents the successes and dignity of African Americans, who have struggled in an inhospitable country. Although this history cannot help but generate a seething anger, Gates's text is careful, judicious and balanced.

[John Bohnert · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at African American history.

[Ted Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is definitely not for everyone. How many people will actually pick up a 400+ page "coffee table" book at the book store, much less buy it, and then actually read it? But that is what history geeks do. So here is the review. First of all, the book is not made for casual reading. Just the size and weight of the book means that it will not be too "portable." It's price tag is formidable, and even having received it as a present, its enormous size meant that it took me four years to even pick it up. And, as expected, it is not a narrative history with a clear thesis. It is more like an encyclopedia, with short (an average of 1 1/2 pages) entries on African-American history. And the encyclopediac nature of the book is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. As one would expect from an encyclopedia, its coverage is very impressive. Every single significant episode of African-American history from the 16th to the early 21st centuries are included: social, political, academic, cultural, athletic, etc. But the encyclopediac nature of the book is also its biggest drawback, as it assumes that no one (aside from the history geeks like me) is reading the book from cover to cover, and thus its presentation of separate yet interrelated, events as distinct entries means that there is a fair bit of repetition. In addition, there are a few too many factual errors for my liking. To be fair, a large proportion of the errors are in the area of sports, and, yes, they are minor errors, but an additional fact checker who was a former "jock" might have paid off. I also got a little tired of the sections that just seemed like a list of names that a school might recite during Black History Month so that they feel that they have contributed something to the day. At this point, I think that I might have been better off to have read Gates' book "Many Rivers To Cross," which is more of a narrative. In short, this a good book to have on your shelf, but for a narrative about the significance of African-American history, you will need to look elsewhere.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had not realized just how big this book was - for some reason, I failed to connect 'sumptuously illustrated' with 'coffee table size'. Despite the impression that coffee table size may give some people, this is an excellent book dealing with aspects of history that are too often overlooked. Even those who think they know American history well may find a surprise or two inside.

[The Advocate]

"These biographies tell the story of not only black history, but American history in a larger sense, describing a people who have thrived despite unimaginable opposition and odds."
Read more here.

[Shawn Hoschar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good. Fairly well balanced...though some liberal portions.

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

A VERY comprehensive overview of american history. Use as a reference guide to more in depth reading.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished! A wonderfully done overview of African American history. The writing is engaging and the imagery helps to keep the reader captivated. It is, in essence, a text book - so keep that in mind. Also, at its size, it is just an overview. But if that’s what you are looking for, an overview of African American history, this is the book for you.

[LaShana Claude]

More than a century before the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision struck down racial segregation of public schools, Boston abolitionists sought to establish equal education rights for black schoolchildren. By the 1790s Massachusetts had largely abolished slavery, but segregated schools remained one of the last strongholds of institutionalized racial predjudice

[Ronando: I Stand With Palestinians · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first of 13 black history books. An excellent review of a history I never learned.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book! A lot of interesting facts and more history about African Americans that I hadn't known. Lots of incredible photos.

[Ryan Maynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhaustive resource, more of a textbook than a biography or singular storyline. A must have for anyone looking for fill knowledge gaps on Black History in America.

[James S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a chronological encyclopedia than a history, the book has both the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. The advantages are that it’s easily browsable, it’s digestible in short chunks, and the author is able to cover a lot of topics. The disadvantages are that the author never goes into depth, there is almost no sense of larger historical context for any of the entries, and there is no time to give a sense of personality to any of the people written about here. There’s also little connection between any of the entries.

The writing is also bland, and occasionally clumsy: “The Turner rebellion, the most famous of the slave revolts - and threatened revolts - in the South, stretching back to the eighteenth century, sent shock waves through the country” (66). Overall, this book is a worthy attempt at an encyclopedic history of African-American history that suffers somewhat from shallowness as well as characterless and sometimes clumsy writing.