Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the
Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves
Nothing short of inspiring, this is the fiercely
compelling tale of what is surely the mother-of-all
civil rights movements—the drive to rid the world
of human slavery.
Twelve men come together to take on a social
evil that the great majority of their countrymen
see as part of the very “nature of things.” Even more
daunting was the fact that so much of English
wealth, from import-export shipping, manufacturing
and overseas plantations, was based on a
slave-economy. Although they drew heavily on the
experience of the Quakers, the men had little experience
in social protest and civic reform. However,
coming together at the end of their work days,
they built this successful movement. In the process,
they developed a number of the tools, such
as direct mail appeals, which are used now around
the world to advance various causes. The individual
life stories of men such as Thomas Clarkson
and William Wilberforce are moving testimonies
to what men of good will can accomplish, particularly
when they band together to bring about social
change.
Adam Hochschild has written a book that is a
marvelous example of scholarship and carefully
detailed annotation seamlessly melded into a gripping
story. The embedded message within the
pages of this work clearly suggests that there are
still evils in our world that we have taken for granted
and which are just waiting for men and women of
energy and good will to take on. Someone reading
this awakening account couldn’t help but say
to him or herself, “Let me look at my world afresh
and consider if I can alleviate some of the suffering
I now see around me.”
—Kevin Ryan, 2006 finalist judge
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2006 Nonfiction Runner-Up
Adam Hochschild
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the
Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves
Adam Hochschild was born in New York City in 1942. His first book,
Half the Way Home: a Memoir of Father and Son, was published in
1986. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called it “an extraordinarily
moving portrait of the complexities and confusions of familial
love...firmly grounded in the specifics of a particular time and place,
conjuring them up with Proustian detail and affection.” It was followed
by The Mirror at Midnight: a South African Journey, and The Unquiet
Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. His 1997 collection, Finding the
Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels, won the PEN/Spielvogel-
Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay. King Leopold’s Ghost: a
Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa was a finalist for
the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award. It also won a J. Anthony
Lukas award in the United States, and the Duff Cooper Prize in England.
His books have been translated into twelve languages and four
of them have been named Notable Books of the Year by The New York
Times Book Review. His Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the
Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, was a finalist for the 2005 National
Book Award in Nonfiction and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
for History. His last two books have also each won Canada’s Lionel
Gelber Prize for the best book on international affairs and the Gold
Medal of the California Book Awards. In 2005, he received a Lannan
Literary Award for Nonfiction.
Hochschild has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York
Review of Books, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, and many
other newspapers and magazines. His articles have won prizes from
the Overseas Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists and
elsewhere. He was a co-founder of Mother Jones magazine and has
been a commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”
Hochschild has taught narrative writing at the Graduate School of Journalism
at the University of California at Berkeley, and spent half a
year as a Fulbright Lecturer in India. He lives in San Francisco with
his wife, sociologist and author Arlie Russell Hochschild. They have
two sons and one granddaughter.
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