Amazing Grace - Eric Metaxas

Amazing Grace

By Eric Metaxas

  • Release Date: 2009-10-13
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 75 Ratings

Description

Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament.

At the center of this heroic life was a passionate twenty-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery itself in the British colonies, a victory achieved just three days before his death in 1833.

Metaxas discovers in this unsung hero a man of whom it can truly be said: he changed the world. Before Wilberforce, few thought slavery was wrong. After Wilberforce, most societies in the world came to see it as a great moral wrong.

To mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade, HarperSanFrancisco and Bristol Bay Productions have joined together to commemorate the life of William Wilberforce with the feature-length film Amazing Grace and this companion biography, which provides a fuller account of the amazing life of this great man than can be captured on film.

This account of Wilberforce's life will help many become acquainted with an exceptional man who was a hero to Abraham Lincoln and an inspiration to the anti-slavery movement in America.

Reviews

  • Amazing Grace

    5
    By Juelz D.
    Absolutely amazing read by an author who is at the top of his game! Hail to Wilberforce and Metaxas!
  • Amazing Grace by Eric Metaxas

    5
    By jrmbasso
    I first learned about William Wilberforce from a lecture by Os Guinness who also introduced him to Eric Metaxas. Metaxas' biography is the third I have read about him and the best in many regards. By turns elegant, witty, and moving, Wilberforce's' life and work are told. I say witty because several people and events in Wilberforce's life, e.g., Granville Sharp and the Queen Caroline 'affair', are described with a comedic flair which adds an extra dimension to the telling. Finally, Metaxas has an insight into Wilberforce's life which can only come from one who loves the same Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ. When I finished reading this book, I realized that had the American Revolution been delayed, slavery would have been abolished and emancipation completed without bloodshed here as it was in the rest of the British empire. The timing of God in this as in all things is indeed inscrutable.