A review by doruga
The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne

3.0

Have some conflicting thoughts on this one. For one I absolutely loved the main argument from this book: that the war for British north american independence was a counter-revolution wanting to maintain the institution of slavery. It is smart, well research, and beautifully defended by Horne. On the other hand, I absolutely hated his writing. This book suffers from academia exclusionary writing. Horne makes his sentences so complicated and hard to understand for absolutely no reason other than for it to fall in line with what's considered "academic writing". As someone who has been having to write some academic papers myself, the culture of purposely complicating simple ideas in order to sound smarter is everywhere in academia and I hate it so much it physically hurts. All it does is deepen the chasm of elitism within academic study and the idea that if youre poor or dont know fancy language then you don't belong in the field. Because of this my experience with the book was severely compromised. I really wanted to love it, but having to go over the same 7 line sentence over and over again just to realize it could have been written much simpler really frustrated me. In the end, I liked the book and am glad I kept going with it. I'd recommend it solely for the argument but thats where the recommendations end unfortunately.