12 Years A Slave

Solomon Northup was born a free man in New York State. At the age of 33 he was kidnapped in Washington D.C. and placed in an underground slave pen. Northup was transported by ship to New Orleans where he was sold into slavery. He spent the next 12 years working as a carpenter, driver, and cotton picker. This narrative reveals how Northup survived the harsh conditions of slavery, including smallpox, lashings, and an attempted hanging. Solomon Northup was among a select few who were freed from slavery. His account describes the daily life of slaves in Louisiana, their diet and living conditions, the relationship between master and slave, and how slave catchers used to recapture runaways. Northup's first person account published in 1853, was a dramatic story in the national debate over slavery that took place in the nine years leading up to the start of the American Civil War. This narrative reveals how Northup survived the harsh conditions of slavery, including smallpox, lashings, and an attempted hanging. Solomon Northup was among a select few who were freed from slavery. His account describes the daily life of slaves in Louisiana, their diet and living conditions, the relationship between master and slave, and how slave catchers used to recapture runaways. Northup's Twelve Years A Slave is one of the best slave narratives ever written.

What Hacker News says

afarrellSep 2015

12 Years a Slave had an interesting bit about how you can make ink by boiling maple bank, though it was far less thorough than Northup's descriptions of the agricultural processes for cotton and sugarcane. There should be a sow like How it's Made, but depicting historical methods.

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peterspathDec 2025

I read 52 books this year:

- Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger

- Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink

- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

- The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

- The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

- When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté

- Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke

- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer

- Standing Strong by John MacArthur

- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

- We Who Wrestle with God by Jordan B. Peterson

- I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek

- The Holy Bible

- Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef

- I Am Giorgia by Giorgia Meloni

- 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

- The Two-Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren

- The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray

- The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray

- The War on the West by Douglas Murray

- Porn Generation by Ben Shapiro

- The Authoritarian Moment by Ben Shapiro

- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

- In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen

- Darkest Hour by Anthony McCarten

- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

- The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

- Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming

- Moonraker by Ian Fleming

- Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming

- From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

- Dr No by Ian Fleming

- Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

- For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming

- Thunderball by Ian Fleming

- The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming

- On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming

- You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

- The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming

- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

- 1984 by George Orwell

- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Next year I will read more books of the Russian writers on this list. I enjoyed those books very much.

After seeing this list, what books do you recommend for me?

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KuiperJun 2019

Japanese 21st century light novel titles have a long way to go if they want to catch up with 18th century book titles, like 12 Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup, citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana (now shortened to 12 Years a Slave), and The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates (commonly abbreviated to Robinson Crusoe)

While search engines didn't exist back then, books of that era had these kinds of titles for similar reasons: they were a way of turning the book's cover into a piece of marketing. Books with long titles could explain their appeal to shoppers without requiring them to pick up the book and open it.

Interestingly, one of the things that may have led to titles getting shorter in the 19th century may be the advent of serialized fiction: as printing technology became more widely available, many famous stories like The Count of Monte Cristo and the early works of Charles Dickens were published chapter-by-chapter in weekly publications (quite similar to how manga are published in weekly magazines like Shounen Jump), and if you had an extra-long title that took up half a page every week, it would add to the printing cost in a non-trivial way.

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mikecaneFeb 2014

Anyone interested in books published by former slaves, go search Google Books. 12 Years A Slave is there among others.

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