Prologue: a man of many worlds -- The island of St. Croix -- "A house negro"--"The mulatto Hans Jonathan" -- "Said to be the secretary" -- Among the sugar barons -- Copenhagen -- A child near the royal palace -- "He wanted to go to war" -- The general's widow v. the mulatto -- The verdict -- Iceland -- A free man -- Mountain guide -- Factor, farmer, father -- Farewell -- Descendants -- The Jonathan family -- The Eirikssons of New England -- Who stole whom? -- The lessons of history -- Epilogue: biographies

The island nation of Iceland is known for many things—majestic landscapes, volcanic eruptions, distinctive seafood—but racial diversity is not one of them. So the little-known story of Hans Jonathan, a free black man who lived and raised a family in early nineteenth-century Iceland, is improbable and compelling, the stuff of novels. In The Man Who Stole Himself, Gisli Palsson lays out the story of Hans Jonathan (also known as Hans Jónatan) in stunning detail. Born into slavery in St. Croix in 1784, Hans was taken as a slave to Denmark, where he eventually enlisted in the navy and fought on behalf of the country in the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen. After the war, he declared himself a free man, believing that he was due freedom not only because of his patriotic service, but because while slavery remained legal in the colonies, it was outlawed in Denmark itself. He thus became the subject of one of the most notorious slavery cases in European history, which he lost. Then Hans ran away—never to be heard from in Denmark again, his fate unknown for more than two hundred years. It’s now known that Hans fled to Iceland, where he became a merchant and peasant farmer, married, and raised two children. Today, he has become something of an Icelandic icon, claimed as a proud and daring ancestor both there and among his descendants in America. The Man Who Stole Himself brilliantly intertwines Hans Jonathan’s adventurous travels with a portrait of the Danish slave trade, legal arguments over slavery, and the state of nineteenth-century race relations in the Northern Atlantic world. Throughout the book, Palsson traces themes of imperial dreams, colonialism, human rights, and globalization, which all come together in the life of a single, remarkable man. Hans literally led a life like no other. His is the story of a man who had the temerity—the courage—to steal himself.

It is the most celebrated escape in the history of American slavery. Henry Brown had himself sealed in a three-foot-by-two-foot box and shipped from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia, a twenty-seven-hour journey to freedom. In Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, Brown not only tells the story of his famed escape, but also recounts his later life as a black man making his way through white American and British culture. Most important, he paints a revealing portrait of the reality of slavery, of the wife and children sold away from him, the home to which he could not return, and his rejection of the slaveholders' religion--painful episodes that fueled his desire for freedom. This edition comprises the most complete and faithful representation of Brown's life, fully annotated for the first time. John Ernest also provides an insightful introduction that places Brown's life in its historical setting and illuminates the challenges Brown faced in an often threatening world, both before and after his legendary escape.

In the tradition of The Orchid Thief, a compelling narrative set within the strange and genteel world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him. Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be. John Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure. With a mixture of suspense, insight, and humor, she has woven this entertaining cat-and-mouse chase into a narrative that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them. Immersing the reader in a rich, wide world of literary obsession, Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.

A handbook of survival and warfare for the citizens of Woodstock Nation A classic of counterculture literature and one of the most influential--and controversial--documents of the twentieth century, Steal This Book is as valuable today as the day it was published. It has been in print continuously for more than four decades, and it has educated and inspired countless thousands of young activists. Conceived as an instruction manual for radical social change, Steal This Book is divided into three sections--Survive! Fight! and Liberate! Ever wonder how to start a guerilla radio station? Or maybe you want to brush up on your shoplifting techniques. Perhaps you're just looking for the best free entertainment in New York City. (The Frick Collection--"Great when you're stoned.") Packed with information, advice, and Abbie's unique outlaw wisdom ("Avoid all needle drugs--the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon."), Steal This Book is a timeless reminder that, no matter what the struggle, freedom is always worth fighting for. "All Power to the Imagination was his credo. Abbie was the best."--Studs Terkel

This “superbly researched and engaging” (The Wall Street Journal) true story about five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice belongs “alongside the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edward P. Jones, and Toni Morrison” (Jane Kamensky, Professor of American History at Harvard University). Philadelphia, 1825: five young, free black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home. Their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War. “Rigorously researched, heartfelt, and dramatically concise, Bell’s investigation illuminates the role slavery played in the systemic inequalities that still confront Black Americans” (Booklist).

We live in an age of persuasion. Leaders and institutions of every kind--public and private, large and small--must compete in the marketplace of images and messages. This has been true since the advent of mass media, from broad circulation magazines and radio through the age of television and the internet. Yet there have been very few true geniuses at the art of mass persuasion in the last century. In public relations, Edward Bernays comes to mind. In advertising, most Hall-of-Famers--J. Walter Thomson, David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach, Bruce Barton, Ray Rubicam, and others--point to one individual as the "father" of modern advertising: Albert D. Lasker. And yet Lasker--unlike Bernays, Thomson, Ogilvy, and the others--remains an enigma. Now, Jeffrey Cruikshank and Arthur Schultz, having uncovered a treasure trove of Lasker's papers, have written a fascinating and revealing biography of one of the 20th century's most powerful, intriguing, and instructive figures. It is no exaggeration to say that Lasker created modern advertising. He was the first influential proponent of "reason why" advertising, a consumer-centered approach that skillfully melded form and content and a precursor to the "unique selling proposition" approach that today dominates the industry. More than that, he was a prominent political figure, champion of civil rights, man of extreme wealth and hobnobber with kings and maharajahs, as well as with the likes of Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. He was also a deeply troubled man, who suffered mental collapses throughout his adult life, though was able fight through and continue his amazing creative and productive activities into later life. This is the story of a man who shaped an industry, and in many ways, shaped a century.

Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Master of the Mountain, Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book—based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers—opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money. So far, historians have offered only easy irony or paradox to explain this extraordinary Founding Father who was an emancipationist in his youth and then recoiled from his own inspiring rhetoric and equivocated about slavery; who enjoyed his renown as a revolutionary leader yet kept some of his own children as slaves. But Wiencek's Jefferson is a man of business and public affairs who makes a success of his debt-ridden plantation thanks to what he calls the "silent profits" gained from his slaves—and thanks to a skewed moral universe that he and thousands of others readily inhabited. We see Jefferson taking out a slave-equity line of credit with a Dutch bank to finance the building of Monticello and deftly creating smoke screens when visitors are dismayed by his apparent endorsement of a system they thought he'd vowed to overturn. It is not a pretty story. Slave boys are whipped to make them work in the nail factory at Monticello that pays Jefferson's grocery bills. Parents are divided from children—in his ledgers they are recast as money—while he composes theories that obscure the dynamics of what some of his friends call "a vile commerce." Many people of Jefferson's time saw a catastrophe coming and tried to stop it, but not Jefferson. The pursuit of happiness had been badly distorted, and an oligarchy was getting very rich. Is this the quintessential American story?

In 1868, William Standing, a man shadowed by his history, is forced into thievery, taking a majestic horse that is half mustang, half Arabian. He returns to an unspeakable tragedy: his sister’s homestead ravaged by the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, a tribe notorious for their fearsome warfare, leaving only the children taken captive. Driven by desperation, Standing tracks the Cheyenne, witnessing the aftermath of their raids. In an unexpected confrontation, Standing proves his mettle, rescuing the children but surrendering the black horse to his adversaries. Just as hope dawns, the horse’s original owners emerge, leading to Standing’s harsh sentencing: twenty years in Georgia Penitentiary. His escape sparks a relentless search for the scattered children, now with distant kin. Joining Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show offers Standing a guise to move from town to town, yet the Pinkertons’ pursuit is unyielding. His quest is a tumultuous ride through the heart of a man’s indomitable spirit and the wild tapestry of the American frontier.