Wanted to like this but it was a bit of a slog. It was challenging to keep track of the various people and their connections, and everything felt repetitive by the end.

"A Madman's Will" deals with an interesting subject matter, but the book was quite a slog to get through.

Gregory May's A Madman's Will is much more than a book about John Randolph. It's a book about the complicated web of racism and slavery in antebellum US, about the experience of freed slaves trying to find a path forward, and about the complex legal framework that allowed all of this to exist. Randolph's last will indicated his slaves would be left to his niece's son (2 at the time) but a handwritten note upon his death stated that his slaves were to be set free upon his death.

Readers hoping to find the story of a man who was famously pro-slavery changing his mind in the very last twilight of his life will be disappointed. May does not scavenge so much from Randolph's motivations, but rather goes into quite a bit of detail about the policies and cases that had shaped slave ownership in Virginia.

There was a lot of detail here and the narrator was very engaging. This book will appeal to those with an interest in legal history and very specific antebellum US history.

This is a fairly short book, with the audiobook clocking in at 8h 38m, but wow does it pack a lot of information into that amount of time. I think the strength of this book is in providing a real life example of how the antebellum United States wasn’t simply slavery vs abolition, and I think learning more about this period helps explain some of the issues of Reconstruction and even into modern times.

That being said I sometimes had a hard time following the narrative. Whether that was due to the writing style or the fact that I was solely listening to the story and not hybrid reading, I can’t be certain. That being said, I think Johnny Heller did an excellent job with the narration. However, I did feel like there were times the author started to focus on things that maybe weren’t as central to the story as others. It is also very clear that the author has trained as a lawyer because there were some parts related to Randolph’s will and the contestation of the will that for sure went over my head.

I wanted to love this book. I wanted to learn more about this time frame [I only knew snatches of this bit of history]. I waited a long time to read/listen to this and when the audiobook finally became available to me [and as soon as I could squeeze it in], I was all in. Unfortunately, it was not all I hoped it to be.

This book is a real slog at times. There is little about John Randolph and a whole lot about wills and manumission and other things that I didn't understand [and plenty that I did; its not hard to see racism when it is right in front of you and there is a TON of that in history and this book covers a good chunk of it]. There is greed and selfishness and plain meanness. And a lot of the same information over and over [which is where it really slogs].

There were really good parts though - I had no idea that Ohio was as *AHEM* quite as against "free slaves" as they turned out to be and learning about that part of history was very enlightening. And learning that being free doesn't actually mean acceptance was again very eye opening [imagine being set free; 13 years pass before it truly happens, and you are then told to get out of the very state you have lived your whole life and then you must W A L K 500 miles {plus travel by boat} to a city that doesn't want you and makes no bones about it] to me and again, I spent much of this book either being totally pissed off or crying my eyes out.

I wish the book as a whole would have been more cohesive and better planned out - there was a lot in there that a common layperson is just not going to understand and that could have been written in a different way so those of us not steeped in historical law could understand, or IMO, left out. Even with the parts that were really good, it was still rather a disappointment for me overall.

I waited a long time for this audiobook and was so glad when my request was granted for a copy and I am glad that I was able to listen to this book rather than try and read read it.
Unfortunately, I think that the narration added to some of my confusion and not loving this book. The narrator has a great voice and really great enunciation and pronunciation, but he reads SO FLIPPING FAST that I ended up losing a lot of the book because of that. If you can listen to really quick narration, then this guy is for you [it is the ONLY negative I have for him and would listen to him again if not for that one issue].

Thank you to NetGalley, Gregory May, Johnny Heller - Narrator, W. W. Norton & Company, and Dreamscape Media for providing the eARC and audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book has a lot of information. Parts were a bit dry. The strength of this book was in the way that it showed how convoluted the issues of slavery/abolition were. There was much more going on than just being for or against slavery. Issues of racism muddied many of the abolitionist ideas when it came down to how to treat freed men and women. It was heartbreaking to see what happened once Randolph's will was enforced and his enslaved people finally set free.

Good read/listen. Narrator kept me engaged. Very in depth recount of history. An added bonus was learning more about my home state's (Ohio) roll in slavery.

In 1821 John Randolph a Virginia senator and a man of great wealth put and his will that all his slaves would be freed and given $10,000 to relocate. It would take 13 years and 30 of the slaves wouldn’t make it to see freedom but six unborn babies and countless other infants and toddlers would only know freedom thanks to the will and people hell-bent on doing the right thing. His cousins the Tuckers, protested the will because in it Senator Randolph said dude to the thievery of their father and the things taken from him and his brothers when they were minors would pay justice to those acts if anyone should contest the will then they would be excluded from it if and when they lost the case. He had many other provisions and addendum‘s but they are too great to go into in this review just know if you love historical nonfiction this one is a doozy and a great read. There’s even a chapter about a man whose name was Gaul about how he had the gall to say generations to come with Skoff at the fact they wanted to free the slaves not in those words exactly I am paraphrasing but essentially that we today would look back and think ha ha how ridiculous they wanted to free people from bondage. Well I guess the joke is on him because I think it’s utterly ridiculous that he fought to keep them there. This is a great book and it’s just sad this was a part of our history to begin with. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I listen to the audiobook in Jonathan Heller narrated it and he now rates a lot of nonfiction books and always does a stellar job. I would I want to thank dreamscape media and Net Galley for my free arc copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.