The Common Wind

Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution

By: Julius S. Scott, Marcus Rediker - foreword

Narrated by: Earl McLean

The Common Wind is a gripping and colorful account of the intercontinental networks that tied together the free and enslaved masses of the New World. Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful "history from below." Scott follows the spread of "rumors of emancipation" and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution.

By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing listeners with an intellectual history of the enslaved.

Though The Common Wind is credited with having "opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words," the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker.

©2018, 2020 Julius S. Scott (P)2022 Tantor

Excellent book, poor narration

This is one of the most important books on the history of the Haitian Revolution and slavery in the Americas. It deserves to be read widely. Unfortunately the narration is difficult to tolerate. The voice is low and gruff and mispronounces many words.

Needs a new reader

The book was well written, and remains an important historical work on the Haitian Revolution. however, the reading was a problem. The reader's voice was low, slow and quiet, but the story is too complicated and technical to not be clear and concise.