"Driven to emigrate by England's devastating anti-Catholic policies, the first Carroll brought with him to Maryland an iron determination to reconstitute his family and fortune. But instead of a more tolerant environment, he found an increasingly militant Protestant society that ultimately disenfranchised Catholics and threatened their wealth and property. Confronting religious antagonisms like those that had destroyed their Irish ancestors, this...

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom and became a passionate advocate for abolition and social change and the foremost spokesperson for the nation's enslaved African American population in the years preceding the Civil War. My Bondage and My Freedom is Douglass's masterful recounting of his remarkable life and a fiery condemnation of a political and social system that would reduce people to property and keep an entire race...