SKU: 124215664

Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War

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Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil WarWinner, 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History Winner, 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Publishers Weekly Starred Review Library Journal Starred Review Booklist Top Ten History Books of 2024 The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants. Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman's legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849,


Winner, 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History
Winner, 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Library Journal Starred Review
Booklist Top Ten History Books of 2024

The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants.

Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman's legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground Railroad, gave instructions on getting to freedom to scores more, and went on to live a lifetime fighting for change. Yet the many biographies, children's books, and films about Tubman omit a crucial chapter: during the Civil War, hired by the Union Army, she ventured into the heart of slave territory--Beaufort, South Carolina--to live, work, and gather intelligence for a daring raid up the Combahee River to attack the major plantations of Rice Country, the breadbasket of the Confederacy.

Edda L. Fields-Black--herself a descendent of one of the participants in the raid--shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina's Combahee River in three gunboats. In a matter of hours, they torched eight rice plantations and liberated 730 people, people whose Lowcountry Creole language and culture Tubman could not even understand. Black men who had liberated themselves from bondage on South Carolina's Sea Island cotton plantations after the Battle of Port Royal in November 1861 enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and risked their lives in the effort.

Using previous unexamined documents, including Tubman's US Civil War Pension File, bills of sale, wills, marriage settlements, and estate papers from planters' families, Fields-Black brings to life intergenerational, extended enslaved families, neighbors, praise-house members, and sweethearts forced to work in South Carolina's deadly tidal rice swamps, sold, and separated during the antebellum period. When Tubman and the gunboats arrived and blew their steam whistles, many of those people clambered aboard, sailed to freedom, and were eventually reunited with their families. The able-bodied Black men freed in the Combahee River Raid enlisted in the Second South Carolina Volunteers and fought behind Confederate lines for the freedom of others still enslaved not just in South Carolina but Georgia and Florida.

After the war, many returned to the same rice plantations from which they had escaped, purchased land, married, and buried each other. These formerly enslaved peoples on the Sea Island indigo and cotton plantations, together with those in the semi-urban port cities of Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah, and on rice plantations in the coastal plains, created the distinctly American Gullah Geechee dialect, culture, and identity--perhaps the most significant legacy of Harriet Tubman's Combahee River Raid.

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SKU: 124215664

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lC
Port Orchard, US
★★★★★ 5
I am looking forward to relaxing and listening to a good (audio) book
Format: Audio CD Library Binding
Thanks. I am looking forward to relaxing and listening to a good (audio) book.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2017
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Rodrigo
Los Angeles, US
★★★★★ 4
Vale la pena es muy bueno
Un libro épico , difícil un poco complicado pero la larga vale la pena lo he leído dos veces y la segunda vez fue igual de emocionante que la primera mucha información
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Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2025
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byegs
Omaha, US
★★★★★ 5
Guns,germs, and steel on disks
This book is full of info most of which is confusing and useless but had to read it for school and the disks really only give the important info and skip the rest. over all product is great!
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Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2010
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kremlin-dawn
Bozeman, US
★★★★★ 5
One of the best purchases I've made in a while.
Format: Hardcover
As a devoted fan of the show from almost the very beginning, I followed all the interviews, sneak peeks, and DVD commentaries aggressively, so I thought I knew a good bit about every aspect of the show, from its influences to its creation process to little trivia bits about the finished episodes. I told myself I didn't need the art book because it would tell me little about Avatar that I didn't already know. For a while I was able to hold off buying this book, but the art in Avatar is so beautiful that I finally broke down and got it, telling myself that I might as well dish out twenty bucks to have a nice hardcover Avatar book to add to my collection of flimsy cinemanga and Earth Kingdom Chronicles paperbacks. Now I'm writing this review to tell every fan out there who has had even a minute's hesitation in buying this book: DO IT. Avatar: The Art of the Animated Series covers everything you could dream of wanting to know about the show. I should have known Bryke would never do anything halfway. I was blown away by the obviously intense amount of effort the creators put into compiling such a thorough and well-put-together inside look at the creation process. They explain everything about Avatar's production, starting with their very first fateful meeting and taking fans all the way up through the end of the epic series. It's so neat to read about all their inspirations (especially if you're an anime fan; you'll probably recognize a lot of names) and some of the difficulties they had to overcome in order to make the show what it is today. It is a fantastic read from cover to cover. As you can tell when you use Amazon's "look inside" feature, the creator commentary is arranged in paragraph format with bold letters to tell which creator is speaking. They actually go into a lot more detail than I thought they would about almost everything. They spend a lot of time talking about the development of characters: their personalities, design characteristics, models, and any changes that were made and why. (Plus it's really neat to see the way some of your favorite characters looked like originally!) They mention the animals, settings, voice acting, martial arts influences, weapons and technology, and all sorts of other things, some that you may not even necessarily have thought about much before, like color schemes and drawing styles. I learned a lot of really neat things about the process behind Avatar's animation and about the Korean studio that did such a beautiful job animating the series. The thing I like most about this book is the great variety of art it showcases. There are original character concepts by various crew members, background sketches and paintings, real storyboard action sequences, martial arts references, detailed clothing and weapon designs, descriptions and illustrations of Avatar-verse animals, screenshots from the show and the original pilot episode, press and/or promotional art, and even some photos Mike and Bryan took on some of their trips to places that inspired the layout of the Avatar universe. And to top it all off, there is at least a one-page spread for each one of Avatar's 61 chapters that highlights some of the strongest points in each episode, whether it's new characters, locations, technology, action sequences, or a combination of several of these. Needless to say, this book is a must-have for all Avatar fans. Whether you're a casual fan who just happened to fall in love with the art (and there is plenty of it in this book, all amazing quality despite the fact that much of it is simply sketched) or you're a die-hard Avatard who wants to know everything about everything, trust me when I say that this compilation is worth every penny and more. As for the packaging and shipping, I have very little to say - the item was wrapped adequately and arrived when it said it would. No problems there. The only minor (and I do mean minor) problem that I had was that one of the corners was bent when it arrived. It probably would have happened anyway, though, through regular use, so it's not really something to complain about. Everything else was fine, and the price is excellent given the durable binding and beautiful thick pages (not to mention the content). I know I've said this so many times that it's probably starting to sound old, but if you want a good look behind the scenes of the greatest cartoon of our generation, this is it. Other creators, take note: this is how TV series art books should be.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2012
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Parka
Bozeman, US
★★★★★ 5
Spellbinding
Format: Hardcover
This is a wonderful art book for a spellbinding animation series. Making the series took 6 years, hundreds of artists, and hundreds of thousands of drawings. This book showcases a selection of some really beautiful illustrations. There are loads of character and background designs inside, in sketches and in their finished coloured form. The main characters like Aang and others come with cool animation sequences created with pencils. Also included are many of the discarded concepts which were difficult to animate or doesn't suit the story. Appa had some really awesome spiral horns but were discarded, unfortunately. The character drawings are superb. Just by looking at their different expressions you can pretty much guess their characteristics. Besides the characters which includes the town folks and soldiers, there are also drawings for many miscellaneous stuff like storyboards, airships, hybrid animals, wanted posters, promotional posters, chibi (or super deformed) style and random doodles from meetings. Did I mention the background paintings? The world created is so beautiful! The whole book is annotated heavily by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino. They talk about everything on production, from creating the pilot episode to Nickelodeon approving the final season. You can see and read about their influences and inspiration everywhere, from Buddhism, Studio Ghibli, Gainax, Chinese martial arts, etc. It's very interesting to see how they apply what they learned from research to their drawings and animation. This is a fantastic art book for the series and fans, which should appeal to anyone who hasn't watch the series. Good art appeals to all. Highly recommended! (There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)
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Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2010

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