Discussing complex topics is an everyday struggle for anyone in the history, public history, and museum careers. But knowing that the research has been done to continue discussing the history is the best way to offer comfort to those staff. I read this predominantly for a class on House Museums in grad school; however, since I work at a plantation museum that is mentioned briefly in this book, I wanted to continue the book and read the chapters that were not required reading. While it was highly beneficial for me to read this book, as it will be for other professionals, please remember that it was written in 2002.

During the years 1998 up to 2002, Professors Eichstedt and Small worked with several graduate students to conduct the research exposed in this book. I went on tours and visited these museums to learn more about how museums discussed their history of free and enslaved people. As they say in the book, things changed over the years they conducted research, and it being 2023, I can say that this has changed again for many of the museums discussed. I highly encourage everyone to read this book as it still discusses topics that are prevalent in the world today. However, I would be very interested in seeing someone, and even myself, going to these sites to compare the changes, if any, over the last almost 21 years.