Buried in the Bitter Waters

April 30, 2007
Jaspin’s harrowing and exhaustively researched history of racial cleansing in the United States is painfully eye-opening, and Leslie’s voice—filled with horror and sorrow—takes the pain to another level. One’s eyes cannot lightly skip over the cringe-inducing passage that explains the physics of whipping, or the scene of the burning and disembowelment of a pregnant woman, or white leaders’ hate-filled speeches. In a low tone radiating rage and disbelief at the senseless violence and hardcore racism, Leslie relates Jaspin’s accounts of a dozen instances of blacks being driven out of their homes by whites in a steady, commanding pace. The stories are disparate in locale and time—the cleansings happened in both North and South after the Civil War through the ’20s—but they flow together thanks to their grim shared topic, Jaspin’s eloquent prose and Leslie’s almost cinematic delivery. Jaspin pursued this topic for 10 years. Listeners will be glad that he persevered to produce this important book: his passion and conviction are richly evident and inspiring throughout thanks to Leslie’s first-rate narration. Simultaneous release with the Basic Books hardcover.