Reviews - Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019

659 reviews for:

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019

Really enjoyed the beginning of this book, but then it decided to meander in the latter half. I don’t know what I was expecting but this is a mish mash of ideas. Sometimes I was super engaged and other times it fell flat. I’m not sure what I a supposed to leave with other than “time is flexible” or “time is different to different people”.

kaylapages's review against another edition

5.0

“But this cultural fixation on time control and one’s ability to modulate time, to manage it better, slow it down and speed it up, is antithetical to the collective sense of time necessary for a political understanding of time.”

sarahwatanabe's review against another edition

1.0

1 star

Thank you to Camille for inspiring me to read this book but she didn't even recommend it to me I just saw her reading it and also started reading it so it's not her fault this book is bad.

This book is about how we perceive time and how it's influenced by the different lenses we look at it. This book had no cohesion it was just different thoughts about time strung together. We also love a well researched queen but this book was all research - it was just quotes from different, better books and then a sentence about it that didn't even really add anything new or interesting about it.

I don't think this book covered anything that isn't out there already and didn't add anything super new to the conversation. Also thought there was little personal insight, which is fine but at least write something innovative. It also gives no concrete advice for the reader which was weird because it gave off the vibe that it would.

wildemountaintime's review against another edition

2.5

slow-paced

Part memoir, part birding journal, part academic evaluation of labor, part ephemera. I'm not sure that I vibe with Odell's style, but I do appreciate her intent.