Video Description: Master storyteller H. W. Brands narrates the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln—two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin — in his latest work “The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom.”

• Use the video in a flipped learning activity and have students come to class prepared to share two insights gained by watching the video and two questions they’d like answered through their own or class research.
• Use the video as inspiration/example for an activity that has your students interview each other on writing they have done. Use the video to show interview styles, types of questions, and how a finished interview video could be edited together.
• Use the video in conjunction with a student activity that has students researching a particular author or a certain form or genre of writing. What insights do they gain from the interview they can use in their project?