Americans tend to assume that modern historiography has produced a full and complete understanding of slavery in the United States, as a shameful pre-modern institution, existing in isolation from America's later success. But while we have long since rejected the idealistic depiction of happy slaves and paternalistic masters, we have not yet begun to grapple with the full extent of slavery's horrors—or its link to the expansion of the country,

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"Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often...

"Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Genesis of White Power and Wealth tells the story of how Black lives and labor created White power and wealth in agriculture, politics, jurisprudence, law enforcement, culture, medicine, financial services, and other fields. Through the lives of individual Black men and women a deeper understanding unravels of the role Blacks played, directly and indirectly, in creating American institutions of power and wealth-while...