BOOK REVIEW: Uncle Tom's Cabin

If you haven't read this book, stop reading this post and go read it.  Harriet Beecher Stowe's great work has definitely made it onto my list of Top 10 Books of all time.  It was life-changing.  I have often wanted to read it but, wary of its heaviness, put it off in favor of lighter pursuits.  But then I took a  CLE (Continuing Legal Education) class where three hours were devoted to two works:  Uncle Tom's Cabin and To Kill a Mockingbird.  I had already read TKAM, but not Uncle Tom.   The professor in the class mentioned that President Lincoln is rumored to have said to Stowe: 


"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war." 

After hearing that I just HAD to read it.  Also, I have been listening the BackStory podcasts about American History and they are riveting and insightful.  Recently they did a three part series on the Civil War that challenged many of my perceptions about it.  I highly recommend you check them out.  Anywho.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is about slavery.  You know that.  Uncle Tom is a Christian and it is his Christianity that defines him.  Through Tom's (and others') experiences, Mrs. Stowe shows the reader the power of personal conviction to overcome the world and to change lives.  Additionally, instead of painting all slave owners as caricatures, she tries to convey the very real dilemmas facing slaveholders. Stowe helped me to understand the very real problem that slavery painted for all men-- not just the enslaved.  I cried, I ranted, I sobbed, I rejoiced and I think I understood what she wanted me to know-- that not all slave holders were evil, not all slaves yearned to be free, but that freedom truly was the only possible answer to the slavery "problem".  Read it.  You won't be sorry.

Here's my friend Nicole's review: http://therewasabook.blogspot.com/2010/03/uncle-toms-cabin.html
She's a much better writer than I am.  You should check it out.

NOTE TO SELF:  Next time you read a life-changing book, don't do it on the kindle-- it makes the note-taking way more difficult and you can't lend it out.  Just saying!