Slavery and the abolitionist movement provide the background for this stiff historical novel [Underground Man]…. Meltzer's nonfiction accounts of black history are much richer and tighter in their illumination of time and place. There is an absence of depth and intensity here due to his failure to develop the black characters fully as people instead of as types.

Rosalind K. Goddard, in her review of "Underground Man," in School Library Journal, an appendix to Library Journal (reprinted from the April, 1973 issue of School Library Journal, published by R. R. Bowker Co./A Xerox Corporation; copyright © 1973), Vol. 19, No. 8, April, 1973, p. 77.