53. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-61907-8 - Houghton Mifflin, 2005

Hochschild has written a compelling account of the abolition movement in Eighteenth Century Britain that paradoxically manages to be scholarly and readable at the same time. In contrast to the recent film Amazing Grace, Hochschild doesn't glamourize William Wilberforce or overstate his role in the campaign to stop the slave trade in the British Empire which lasted nearly fifty years.