What does recent scholarship tell us about the active role enslaved people played on the

eve of the Civil War?

Historian Kerry Grunnich will be here to talk about two new books, South DeFreedom and

the Kidnapping Club.

With Ted Kennedy the most accomplished of the Kennedy Brothers, Neil Gaybler will be here

to discuss the first volume of his two-part biography, Catching the Wind.

Alexander Alter will have an update from the publishing world, plus our critics will

join us for the latest in literary criticism.

This is the Book Review Podcast for the New York Times.

It's December 18th.

I'm Pamela Paul.

Kerry Grunnich joins us now from outside Boston.

She is the Melon Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race Colonialism

and Diaspora at Tufts University. She's also the author of Black Radical, The Life and

Times of William Monroe Trotter.

And this week she reviews two books on the cover of the Book Review.

They are South DeFreedom, Runaway Slaves to Mexico, and the Road to the Civil War by

Alice L. Baumgartner, and the Kidnapping Club, Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance

on the eve of the Civil War by Jonathan Daniel Wells.

All right, that's a lot.

Kerry, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

...