Thank you to Netgalley and the author for providing a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Honestly, I really loved this book. It wasn't until I picked it up that I realized I had another book by this author on my TBR for AGES (Salt) and now I'm going to pick it up asap.

This was a history of abolition in Boston, but more accurately, I'd say it's a history of revolution in Boston leading up to the civil war. Kurlansky dedicates large portions of chapters to women's rights and other forms of disobedience, which provides a richer look into the culture of Boston, but I did forget I was reading about abolition at times. However Kurlansky's writing is engaging and paints a really vivid portrait of each of the people he talks about. He highlights all the differences of opinion even within the same movements and I learned a ton.

If I could make one complaint, it would be that I almost felt suffocated by the limitation to Boston at times. It was definitely a very interesting focal point to choose as I feel like a lot of anti-slavery narratives look to the South, and Kurlansky did look outside of Boston a bit to fill in some details, but for the most part we were stuck in Boston as if this was the only place in the world where these debates and conversations were happening. Even if we didn't focus on other countries, other northern cities, or the South in any large capacity, it would've been nice to check in a bit more to see how this Bostonian subculture was interacting with the larger world.

To clarify, I am not a historian, but nothing seemed incorrect or misleading from my limited knowledge, and this book seemed well researched. My rating mostly takes into account my own personal enjoyment as well as how much I felt I learned reading this (which was a lot)