Synopses & Reviews
All God's Dangers won the National Book Award in 1975.
"There are only a few American autobiographies of surpassing greatness. . . . Now there is another one, Nate Shaw's."—New York Times
"On a cold January morning in 1969, a young white graduate student from Massachusetts, stumbling along the dim trail of a long-defunct radical organization of the 1930s, the Alabama Sharecropper Union, heard that there was a survivor and went looking for him. In a rural settlement 20 miles or so from Tuskegee in east-central Alabama he found him—the man he calls Nate Shaw—a black man, 84 years old, in full possession of every moment of his life and every facet of its meaning. . . . Theodore Rosengarten, the student, had found a black Homer, bursting with his black Odyssey and able to tell it with awesome intellectual power, with passion, with the almost frightening power of memory in a man who could neither read nor write but who sensed that the substance of his own life, and a million other black lives like his, were the very fiber of the nation's history." —H. Jack Geiger, New York Times Book Review
"Extraordinarily rich and compelling . . . possesses the same luminous power we associate with Faulkner." —Robert Coles,Washington Post Book World
"Eloquent and revelatory. . . . This is an anthem to human endurance." —Studs Terkel, New Republic
"The authentic voice of a warm, brave, and decent individual. . . . A pleasure to read. . . . Shaw's observations on the life and people around him, clothed in wonderfully expressive language, are fresh and clear."—H.W. Bragdon, Christian Science Monitor
"Astonishing . . . Nate Shaw was a formidable bearer of memories. . . . Miraculously, this man's wrenching tale sings of life's pleasures: honest work, the rhythm of the seasons, the love of relatives and friends, the stubborn persistence of hope when it should have vanished . . . All God's Dangers is most valuable for its picture of pure courage."—Paul Grey, Time
"A triumph of ideas and historical content as well of expression and style."—Randall Jarrell, Harvard Educational Review
"Tremendous . . . a testimony of human nobility . . . the record of a heroic man with a phenomenal memory and a life experience of a kind of seldom set down in print. . . . a person of extraordinary stature, industrious, brave, prudent, and magnanimous. . . . One emerges from these hundred of pages wiser, sadder, and better because of them. A unique triumph!"—Alfred C. Ames, Chicago Tribune Book World
"Awesome and powerful . . . A living history of nearly a century of cataclysmic change in the life of the Southerner, both black and white . . . Nate Shaw spans our history from slavery to Selma, and he can evoke each age with an accuracy and poignancy so pure that we stand amazed."—Baltimore Sun
Review
“Somewhere along the line, people stopped talking about it. Friends of mine who talk about nothing except Southern literature have barely heard of the book. I pounced on it after I discovered that Richard Howorth, the well-read owner of Square Books, the independent bookstore in Oxford, Miss., utters its title aloud every time a customer asks the question, 'What one book would you say best explains the South?' I wish I could say that, this early spring, I read All Gods Dangers in one sitting. Its not that kind of book. Its a meandering thing; its pleasures are intense but cumulative. This book rolls. But it is superb—both serious history and a serious pleasure, a story that reads as if Huddie Ledbetter spoke it while W. E. B. Du Bois took dictation. That its been largely forgotten is bad for it, but worse for us. . . . All Gods Dangers . . . deserves a place in the front rank of American autobiographies. There are many reasons, in 2014, to attend to Ned Cobbs [Nate Shaws] story.”
Review
“There are only a few American autobiographies of surpassing greatness. . . . Now there is another one, Nate Shaws.”
Review
“Extraordinarily rich and compelling . . . possesses the same luminous power we associate with Faulkner.”
Review
“Eloquent and revelatory. . . . This is an anthem to human endurance.” Robert Coles - Washington Post Book World
Review
“The authentic voice of a warm, brave, and decent individual. . . . A pleasure to read. . . . Shaws observations on the life and people around him, clothed in wonderfully expressive language, are fresh and clear.” Studs Terkel - New Republic
Review
“Astonishing . . . Nate Shaw was a formidable bearer of memories. . . . Miraculously, this mans wrenching tale sings of lifes pleasures: honest work, the rhythm of the seasons, the love of relatives and friends, the stubborn persistence of hope when it should have vanished . . . All Gods Dangers is most valuable for its picture of pure courage.” H.W. Bragdon - Christian Science Monitor
Review
“A triumph of ideas and historical content as well of expression and style.” Paul Grey - Time
Review
“Tremendous . . . a testimony of human nobility . . . the record of a heroic man with a phenomenal memory and a life experience of a kind of seldom set down in print. . . . a person of extraordinary stature, industrious, brave, prudent, and magnanimous. . . . One emerges from these hundred of pages wiser, sadder, and better because of them. A unique triumph!” Randall Jarrell - Harvard Educational Review
Review
“Awesome and powerful . . . A living history of nearly a century of cataclysmic change in the life of the Southerner, both black and white . . . Nate Shaw spans our history from slavery to Selma, and he can evoke each age with an accuracy and poignancy so pure that we stand amazed.” Alfred C. Ames - Chicago Tribune Book World
Synopsis
All God's Dangers won the National Book Award in 1975.
"On a cold January morning in 1969, a young white graduate student from Massachusetts, stumbling along the dim trail of a long-defunct radical organization of the 1930s, the Alabama Sharecropper Union, heard that there was a survivor and went looking for him. In a rural settlement 20 miles or so from Tuskegee in east-central Alabama he found himthe man he calls Nate Shawa black man, 84 years old, in full possession of every moment of his life and every facet of its meaning. . . . Theodore Rosengarten, the student, had found a black Homer, bursting with his black Odyssey and able to tell it with awesome intellectual power, with passion, with the almost frightening power of memory in a man who could neither read nor write but who sensed that the substance of his own life, and a million other black lives like his, were the very fiber of the nation's history." H. Jack Geiger, New York Times Book Review
Table of Contents
Preface
Youth
Deeds
Prison
Revelation
Appendix
Index