Shapeshifter
William Henry Ellis was born into slavery on a Texas cotton plantation but reinvented himself completely and successfully as a Mexican millionaire.
The author of The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire, Karl Jacoby is a professor of history at Columbia University. The author of two previous books, he has won the Albert J. Beveridge Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. He lives in New York.