The Strange Career of William Ellis, Karl Jacoby
The Strange Career of William Ellis, Karl Jacoby
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The Strange Career of William Ellis
The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire

Author: Karl Jacoby

Narrator: JD Jackson

Unabridged: 9 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/15/2016


Synopsis

To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor of a devastating secret: he was not, in fact, from Mexico at all. Rather, he had begun life as a slave named William Ellis, born on a cotton plantation in Texas during the waning years of King Cotton.

After emancipation, Ellis, capitalizing on the Spanish he learned during his childhood along the Mexican border and his ambivalent appearance, engaged in a virtuoso act of reinvention. He crafted an alter ego, the Mexican Guillermo Eliseo, who was able to access many of the privileges denied to African Americans at the time.

The Strange Career of William Ellis offers fresh insights on the history of the Reconstruction era, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the abiding riddle of race. At a time when the United States is deepening its connections with Latin America and recognizing that race is more than simply black or white, Ellis's story could not be more timely or important.

About Karl Jacoby

Karl Jacoby is a professor of history at Columbia University. The author of Shadows at Dawn and Crimes against Nature, he has won the Albert J. Beveridge Award and a Guggenheim fellowship, among many other honors. He lives in New York.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Blaine on August 21, 2016

A very strange book. As a biography this gets about a 1.5* but as for a history of US/Mexican and Black/Mexican relations it is a 4****. I say this because for at least the first half of the book William Ellis is really nowhere to be found. A mention here or there but most all of this is about those......more

Goodreads review by Alexandra on February 22, 2024

Unclear where he actually got all that money since all his businesses failed but cool book anyway......more

Goodreads review by Amber on February 09, 2024

This gripping biography of William Henry Ellis is a book understated in its importance to both African American and Latin American histories. The book, through its vast primary sources, avoids fictionalizing or over-dramatizing the story of Ellis and offers a captivating and educational biography of......more

Goodreads review by Stephen on October 31, 2019

Fantastic book. Great research and really amazing story.......more

Goodreads review by Bella on March 07, 2021

I felt like was reading a version of Catch Me if You Can about the complexity of race during the gilded age.......more