Humez's book comprises a biography (Part 1, “The Life”), two long essays (“Harriet Tubman's Practices as a Life-Storyteller” and “Reading the Core Stories for Harriet Tubman's Own Perspective”), two sets of source texts (“Stories and Sayings” and “Documents”), extensive notes, two appendices (“A Note on Harriet Tubman's Kin” and “A Note on the Numbers [of rescued slaves]”), thirty-three pages of bibliography, and an index. Separately each part has much to offer, but the whole project, whose major purpose is to uncover the consequences of mediation in source texts and thereby reveal the authentic Tubman, does not fully cohere as a study in biography.

The logic of the project and the order of the parts are problematic. The biography, placed first, cites, quotes, and comments on many of the source stories and documents. It concludes with a brief discussion of “Tubman as a symbol in twentieth-century race politics,” but this is mostly about her funeral and memorial events and schemes before 1920. “The Life” is followed by the conceptual and methodological essays that, inter alia, deal with Tubman's relations with contemporary biographers, patrons, and promoters, revealing their mediating roles in the public portrait of an anti-slavery heroine. The “core stories” necessarily appear again, as Humez describes and analyses Tubman's performances, letters she dictated, and what was written about her. Then follow the source texts, edited but fuller than earlier quotes (eighty pages of stories and sayings, sixty of documents). There is too much material, often redundant or repetitious, and too little integrative discussion and description. The Tubman who emerges from these diverse pages is fragmented.

But the reader's engagement, with Humez's biography and essays, the assembly of sources, twenty-six illustrations, the additional information in appendices and the copious endnotes, never flags. There is much to learn in this useful and thought-provoking compendium, a good bedside or travelling companion.

Since its original publication two scholarly biographies of Tubman have appeared, both in 2004: Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson (anticipated by Humez, who acknowledges Larson's sharing of research materials) and Catherine Clinton's Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. Neither has yet been reviewed in this journal and, unfortunately, there has been no opportunity to bring them together in a review essay. I hope specialist scholars will attempt critical comparisons, for students need guidance in this age of abundant information and academic convergence.