Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
Book Review: thought provoking and inspirational
Summary: 5 Stars
I was amazed by the man Wilberforce, his committment to Jesus Christ which led to his actions on behalf of those held in slavery as well as his committment to bring Christian principles to every part of life in England. Book Review: Amazing Grace, Amazing man, amazing story
Summary: 5 Stars
After seeing the movie (twice) and now reading this well told biography, I have added a new person to my list of people whose have had such a powerful life purpose that it outlived them. Others that have been on that list include Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, the Kennedys, etc. Interestingly enough, despite the incredible life that William Wilberforce led and the profound difference he made in our world, his story was almost lost to our generations. I'm so glad it was brought to light by both the movie and this powerful biography.
Metaxas does a commendable job keeping this biography both engaging and surprisingly upbeat given the serious subject matter -- the campaign to end slavery. You will be inspired by the story of this man -- proof that one person can make a profound and lasting difference even against apparently insurmountable odds.
Book Review: Well written and inspirational
Summary: 5 Stars
One short life can make a difference in this world. The narrative caught my attention early in the reading and kept me reading to the end. This person may not be as familiar to Americans as to British readers, but he's well worth knowing. William Wilberforce set before himself two great "causes." The first was to bring about the emancipation of the slave trade. The second, to reform the manners or thinking of society to look to the needs of those around them. This amazing man through tireless effort-over twenty years- succeeded on both counts. He was influential in the creation of Sierra Leone, the building of the government in Haiti, the emancipation of slavery in France through correspondence with Napolean. He was a contemporary and friend of William Pitt (prime minister of England), Grenville (also prime minister). It was in direct relation to his reforms that the "Victorian Era" came to be known as the era of charity. I can't possibly relate everything that this remarkable man accomplished in this short forum. I recommend the book to anyone who likes to read well written informative biographies.
Book Review: Wilberflawed
Summary: 3 Stars
In the bibliography page of Amazing Grace it is written "If anything or anyone can ever rightly be said to stand tall upon the shoulders of giants, both this book and its author certainly can." This hyperbole is so far off the mark that I wonder how such fiction can end a biography of one of history's most heroic figures. Amazing Grace is the most disappointing book I've read this year.
Amazing Graces is less a serious biography, it has no index, and more a Sunday School portrait of a man who just had to win since God was on his side, and who went from mountain top to mountain top in his long trek to end the slave trade and then slavery. Written to go with the new movie commemorating the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery, the book comes across as less a serious study and more a message to encourage and convert.
Metaxes' jocular prose does not do the subject matter justice, as when he describes Wilberforce's move toward Christianity by discussing an influential book with a friend during a long carriage ride:
The extraordinary felicity of this scene, of these incandescent minds meeting on this subject of eternal things, sailing in their horse-drawn coach through the mountains, seems like something out of a fairytale, one in which a gnome and a giant on a journey in a sphere of glass and silver discover the Well at the World's End, and drinking a draught there from learn the secret meaning at the heart of the universe. For Wilberforce and Milner it must at times have seemed like a wild but happy dream, one from which they never wanted to wake. (p. 48 2007 Hardback edition)
What is this, a night in Narnia?
Or Wilberforce's response when the slave trade was finally outlawed:
The tiny trickle from Wilberforce's ducts loosed a diluvian apocalypse never before seen in the chamber. (p. 211 2007 hardback edition).
This is not good writing, nor is the author's decision to preach to the reader ("Ideas have far-reaching consequences, and one must be ever so careful about what one allows to lodge in one's brain, p. 51)
Frustrating as well was the presentation of Wilberforce almost as a modern-day evangelical. The historian George Bancroft advised a writer to present a subject in his own terms and then judge that subject in the terms of the writer. In Amazing Grace Wilberforce is not given this opportunity, rather he is presented as the conservative evangelical worldview wants him to be seen.
The book improves when discussing Wilberforce's undisciplined, one might say zany, personal life, and its coverage of the final triumph of the abolition forces. Yet this improvement is brought about not just by the subject matter, but the author's more straightforward writing, departing from his earlier waggish prose.
While valiant, Wilberforce in Amazing Grace is almost two-dimensional, and his sunny disposition allows for doubts, but no dark night of the soul. If you hold that this book presents the most accurate historical picture of William Wilberforce, you might be inclined to buy Amazing Grace, and then add a Wilberforce coloring book along with it.
Book Review: A Most Amazing Book
Summary: 5 Stars
"Amazing Grace, William Wilberforce and the heroic campaign to end slavery."
This is one of those rare books which you cannot put down till you have read it completely. It is an astonishing true account set in a correct historical setting, about a brave man, Wilberforce, who was determined to live by the principles Jesus taught and so, without warfare or bloodshed, he changed the course of history. and saved the British Empire from corruption It took decades of perseverance and standing against opposition until finally the slave trade was abolished just shortly before his death. One of the best, most thrilling books I have read