Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass died over one hundred years ago, but his spirit endures in this short account he wrote of his life. Brief yet detailed, it resonates with the same subdued anger and passion against injustice that marked his later work. That spirit of controlled fury has been caught in the reading by Pete Papageorge. Though slow and deliberate, it carries with it an undertone of strong feeling. His deep voice more than suggests Douglass's authority and his position as the grandfather and living symbol of the abolitionist movement. When the ex-slave bristles at the horrors in the slave-holding system and methodically details the damage done by that system to the economy and psyche of the South, it may be Papageorge's voice we hear, but it is Douglass's scathing condemnation ringing through the ages. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

While many listeners and most libraries will want to own the audio version of this classic tale of slavery and escape, this may not be the version to purchase. Narrator Covell could be any nineteenth-century gentleman reading his memoirs; his restrained style gives little hint of the eloquent orator who contemporaries reported could move listeners to laugh and weep in turn. Covell seems so removed from the abject conditions and cruelty that Douglass endured that school children listening will either be bored or won't feel the emotional involvement such a powerful piece of literature should evoke. T.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine