Short Takes

Places of the Underground Railroad: A Geographical Guide by Tom Calarco with Cynthia Vogel and others is reviewed. Calarco, writing with Vogel and others, offers a comprehensive guide to sites historically essential to the liberation of fugitive slaves during the antebellum period. Organized alphabetically by city name, the entries run several pages in length and include subsegments that detail specific structures, significant incidents, and individuals essential to slave movement. Grayscale photographs feature stations as they appear today, while sidebars offer vital glimpses of safe passage logistics, including transcriptions of coded correspondence between station families and other abolitionists. Other books are reviewed.