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Home > Museum Shop > Books & Media > Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America
  Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America
Price: $15.00
By Evan Carton
John Brown is a lightning rod of history. Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes—as a madman, martyr, or enigma. This illuminating biography brings him to life in scintillating prose and moving detail, making his life and legacy fascinatingly relevant to today's issues of social justice and to defining the line between activism and terrorism.
With a combination of scrupulous original research, new perspective, and a sensitive historical imagination, Patriotic Treason vividly recreates the world in which John Brown and his compatriots lived as well as the biography of John Brown and the history of the events leading up to the Civil War. Evan Carton narrates the dramatic life of the first U.S. citizen committed to absolute racial equality. In defiance of the culture around him, Brown lived, worked, ate, and fought alongside African Americans. Inspired by the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule, he collaborated with black leaders, such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and Harriet Tubman, to overthrow slavery.
Carton captures the complex, tragic, and provocative story of Brown the committed abolitionist, Brown the tender yet demanding and often absent father and husband, and Brown the radical American patriot who attacked the American state in the name of American principles. Carton's fresh archival research, his attention to overlooked family letters, and his reinterpretation of documents and events reveal a missing link in American history. A wrenching family saga, Patriotic Treason positions Brown at the heart of our most profound and enduring national debates on patriotism, treason, religion, and race relations.
387 pages, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-7432-7136-3, Free Press, 2006.
What's related:
• Don't miss William Rasmussen's upcoming Banner Lectureon John Brown
• Learn more about The Portent: John Brown's Raid in American Memory exhibition at the VHS
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