This is a bit of an odd book to describe. More than anything else, its structure reminds me of a scrapbook: disparate bits and pieces crammed together, with no editorial comments. Which is not to say that this indicates an absence of editorial input, as the whole has clearly been painstakingly constructed from an enormous variety of sources. The whole effect, at the end (and I am only guessing as to what was intended) is to cement African Americans in the history of the United States, in multiple ways and in multiple fields, in order to prevent the whitewashing of history which is frankly all too common.

Some of that history is horrid and confronting. Cheek by jowl with photographs of art made by slaves are photographs and records of lynching, and this is hard to look at. Unsurprisingly, the early parts of The Black Book have a heavy focus on slavery, and while this is leavened with documentation of active resistance, the real variety comes through later in the book, with sections on everything from music to military history. What's most impressive, though, is the variety of sources. All are contemporary, from newspaper articles (admittedly, sometimes these were hard to read because the font was so tiny; one of the few times I would have preferred a change in format), letters, artwork, legal documents, musical scores, poetry, movie posters... when I said above that this book has the feel of a scrapbook this is why! It's an enormously appealing approach to history, collating so many contemporary records in this way. And while I see the reason in having all the editorial work behind the curtain, as it were, I would have loved for this book to have included a chapter (or a foreword, or an afterword) on the making of it, and how the editors made the choices that they did. Because as crammed as this book is with primary sources, they can only be a fraction of what actually exists...