Empire Without End: A New History of Britain and the Caribbean - REVIEW

by Imaobong Umoren

A powerful, groundbreaking new history of Britain and the Caribbean, challenging existing thinking about British colonization and recontextualizing the twin stories of contemporary inequality in both regions.

In Empire Without End, historian Imaobong Umoren delivers an incisive and captivating exploration of the deep, complex ties between Britain and the Caribbean—largely underexamined until now. Spanning from the 16th century to the present, this riveting narrative redefines how we view the Caribbean—not just as a source of labor and resources for the British Empire, but as a dynamic testing ground for social and cultural experimentation. Umoren uncovers how the Caribbean shaped British societal ideals, many of which were exported back to Britain, laying the foundation for a racial-caste system that still affects social, political, and economic life today.

This deeply researched work goes beyond historical accounts of sugar plantations and slavery. Umoren dives deeper, exploring how religion, global migration, war, grassroots protest, and even tourism all played into the Caribbean’s lasting legacy. She boldly connects the dots to modern-day issues, arguing that the shadow of British colonization lingers through neo-colonialism, continuing to shape the lives of Caribbean people. As the world confronts a collective racial reckoning, Empire Without End sheds light on the ongoing fight for reparations and justice, offering a much-needed lens on history’s unfinished business.

Written with clarity and packed with profound insights, Empire Without End is a must-read for anyone curious about the intertwined histories of Britain, the Caribbean, and America. Joining the ranks of acclaimed historical titles like Black Ghosts of Empire and works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, this book provides a fresh, urgent perspective on empire’s enduring impact and the global conversation it demands today.

Imaobong Umoren is a historian of racism, women and gender in the Caribbean, Britain, and wider African diaspora. She is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Scribner
ISBN-13: 978-1982175016

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights - REVIEW

by Dylan C. Penningroth 

A prize-winning scholar draws on astonishing new research to demonstrate how Black people used the law to their advantage long before the Civil Rights Movement.

The familiar story of civil rights goes like this: once, America’s legal system shut Black people out and refused to recognize their rights, their basic human dignity, or even their very lives. When lynch mobs gathered, police and judges often closed their eyes, if they didn’t join in. For Black people, law was a hostile, fearsome power to be avoided whenever possible. Then, starting in the 1940s, a few brave lawyers ventured south, bent on changing the law. Soon, ordinary African Americans, awakened by Supreme Court victories and galvanized by racial justice activists, launched the civil rights movement.

In Before the Movement, acclaimed historian Dylan C. Penningroth brilliantly revises the conventional story. Drawing on long-forgotten sources found in the basements of county courthouses across the nation, Penningroth reveals that African Americans, far from being ignorant about law until the middle of the twentieth century, have thought about, talked about, and used it going as far back as even the era of slavery. They dealt constantly with the laws of property, contract, inheritance, marriage and divorce, of associations (like churches and businesses and activist groups), and more. By exercising these “rights of everyday use,” Penningroth demonstrates, they made Black rights seem unremarkable. And in innumerable subtle ways, they helped shape the law itself―the laws all of us live under today.

Penningroth’s narrative, which stretches from the last decades of slavery to the 1970s, partly traces the history of his own family. Challenging accepted understandings of Black history framed by relations with white people, he puts Black people at the center of the story―their loves and anger and loneliness, their efforts to stay afloat, their mistakes and embarrassments, their fights, their ideas, their hopes and disappointments, in all their messy humanness. Before the Movement is an account of Black legal lives that looks beyond the Constitution and the criminal justice system to recover a rich, broader vision of Black life―a vision allied with, yet distinct from, “the freedom struggle.”

Dylan C. Penningroth is a professor of law and history at the University of California, Berkeley. A MacArthur Prize fellow and author of The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South, he lives in Kensington, California.

Dylan Penningroth is the winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, Winner of the Beveridge Award, American Historical Association, Winner of the Littleton-Griswold Prize, American Historical Association, Winner of the John Philip Reid Award, American Society for Legal History, Winner of the Order of the Coif Book Award, Winner of the Charles Sydnor Award, Southern Historical Association, Winner of the Scribes Book Award, Winner of the Merle Curti Social History Award from the Organization of American Historian, Winner of the Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, Winner of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History, Winner of the James Willard Hurst Prize, Finalist for the Cundill History Prize, Shortlisted for the Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History, Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize, Columbia Journalism School, and Shortlisted for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Phi Beta Kappa.

Liveright
ISBN-13: 978-1324093107

The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War - REVIEW

by Tom Zoellner

In the opening days of the Civil War, three enslaved men approached the gates of Fort Monroe, a U.S. military installation in Virginia. In a snap decision, the fort’s commander “confiscated” them as contraband of war.

From then on, wherever the U.S. Army traveled, torrents of runaways rushed to secure their own freedom, a mass movement of 800,000 people—a fifth of the enslaved population of the South—that set the institution of slavery on a path to destruction.

In an engrossing work of narrative history, critically acclaimed historian Tom Zoellner introduces an unforgettable cast of characters whose stories will transform our popular understanding of how slavery ended. The Road Was Full of Thorns shows what emancipation looked and felt like for the people who made the desperate flight across dangerous territory: the taste of mud in the mouth, the terror of the slave patrols, and the fateful crossing into Union lines. Zoellner also reveals how the least powerful Americans changed the politics of war—forcing President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and opening the door to universal Black citizenship.

For readers of The 1619 Project—and anyone interested in the Civil War—The Road Was Full of Thorns is destined to reshape how we think about the story of American freedom.

Tom Zoellner is the author of nine nonfiction books, including Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for the best nonfiction book of 2020. He works as a professor at Chapman University and as an editor-at-large for the Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Los Angeles.

The New Press
ISBN-13: 979-8893850086

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe - REVIEW

by Marlene L. Daut

The essential biography of the controversial revolutionary and only king of Haiti. Henry Christophe (1767 - 1820) is one of the most richly complex figures in the history of the Americas, and was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. In The First and Last King of Haiti, a brilliant, award-winning Yale scholar unravels the still controversial enigma that he was.

Slave, revolutionary, king, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to end slavery. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe began fighting with Napoleon's forces against the formerly enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had abandoned, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe—after nine years of his rule as King Henry I—shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.

But why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated?  How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti's first ruler, Dessalines?  And what caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north and the other led by President Pétion in the south? 

Drawing from a trove of previously overlooked sources to paint a captivating history of his life and the awe-inspiring kingdom he built, Marlene L. Daut offers a fresh perspective on a figure long overshadowed by caricature and cliché. Peeling back the layers of myth and misconception reveals a man driven by both noble ideals and profound flaws, as unforgettable as he is enigmatic. More than just a biography, The First and Last King of Haiti is a masterful exploration of power, ambition, and the human spirit. From his pivotal role in the Haitian Revolution to his coronation as king and eventual demise, this book is testament to the enduring allure of those who dare to defy the odds and shape the course of nations.

The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.

Marlene L. Daut is Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University. She teaches courses in anglophone, francophone Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies.  She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Nation, Essence, and Harper's Bazaar. She lives with her family in New Haven, Connecticut.

Knopf
ISBN-13: 978-0593316160

Advice to someone who is 30yrs old on Oct 3, 2025

1. Open an E-Trade account and deposit $25-$50 per week into it. Then invest in low cost index funds (VOO, SPY, VTI) anything that's diversified and has a low expense ratio.

2. Open a Fundrise account and start investing into real estate without having to have tens of thousand of dollars for a down payment.  If you don't like Fundrise, then consider $10/month into REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) which are publicly traded real estate trusts that distribute 90% of their taxable income as dividends.

3. oOpen an Acorns account and start rounding up whenever you get the chance, this allows you to invest in yourself using your spare change.

Four Reasons to Avoid "Theme" Based ETFs:

1. The ridiculously high fees, thematic funds are notoriously expensive often with fees around 1%

2. They don't have any track record and lack a performance history or consistent management.

3. Most of them have already failed with about 80% of thematic funds close within the first five years of their existence.

4. The theme is usually completely misleading.

If you are under 30yrs old EVERYDAY YOU WAIT IS ANOTHER DAY YOU WASTE.

DISCLAIMER: this is not financial advice and is only for educational purposes only.

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