The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
by Edward E. Baptist · 2014
Buy on AmazonAmericans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution —the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success—. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in the prizewinning The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy.…
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"This book's examination of slavery's economic impact aligns with Ta-Nehisi Coates's work exploring the historical and ongoing legacy of racial inequality in America. It offers a deep dive into the systemic forces that shaped the nation."
Ta-Nehisi Coates's NYPL Reading List · nypl.org
"It taught me so much about slavery and how slavery enabled America to become America. Every time I left my house after reading it, I saw the world differently."
By the Book: Jesmyn Ward · nytimes.com