Very glad I decided not just to skim-read the early chapters from Frederick Douglass's Life and Times on his years of slavery on the grounds that almost everything therein is a repeat of the material on those years from My Bondage and My Freedom, which is in itself an expanded account of the pithy Narrative of the Life. For some reason the painful injustices of slavery as experienced by Douglass seemed even more intense on this re-reading and his remarkable strength of personality came through even more vividly than ever.
I'm now embarked on his account of the years of his freedom, so the narrative has a sense of novelty about it as I've only got the vaguest notions of what he achieved in those years. But you wouldn't need to be a detective to guess that his life is going to be an extraordinary one given the qualities he shows in his youth. The man is one of the most abundantly formidable I've ever read of. I'm not sure he always gets it right, but I am sure he lives with an overwhelming drive to do what is right that is deeply inspiring, and chastening.
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