From the nobility in the kingdom of Borno to being kidnapped into slavery, the inspiring life-story of Nicholas Said is an epic journey through the nineteenth century that takes him from Africa to the Ottoman Empire, and finally from Czarist Russia to the American Civil War, becoming a sergeant in one of the first African American regiments in the Union Army.In the late 1830s a young Black man was born into a world of wealth and privilege in the powerful, thousand-year-old African kingdom of Borno. But instead of becoming a respected general like his fearsome father (who was known as The Lion), Nicolas Said's fate was to fight a very different kind of battle. At the age of thirteen, Said was kidnapped and sold into slavery, beginning an epic journey that would take him across Africa, Asia, Europe, and eventually the United States, where he would join one of the first African American regiments in the Union Army. Nicholas Said would then spend the rest of his...