The Half Has Never Been Told

Bloomberg View Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 2014 In this assiduously researched and tightly argued volume, Baptist gives us what is by far the finest account of the deep interplay of the slave trade (especially within the nation's borders) and the development of the U.S. economy. Wall Street Journal Abolitionists were contemptuous of such self-serving nonsense, but they too tended to see slavery as an economically inefficient, and morally reprehensible, hangover from the premodern past... In The Half Has Never Been Told, Edward E. Baptist takes passionate issue with such assumptions. He asserts that slavery was neither inherently inefficient nor a counterpoint to capitalism. Rather, he says, it was woven inextricably into the transnational fabric of early 19th-century capitalism...Baptist writes with verve and a good eye for the dramatic. New York Times Book Review Baptist's work is a valuable addition to the growing literature on slavery and American development... Baptist has a knack for explaining complex financial matters in lucid prose...[The Half Has Never Been Told's] underlying argument is persuasive. Los Angeles Times An ambitious new economic and social history of antebellum America... The overwhelming power of the stories that Baptist recounts and the plantation-level statistics he's compiled give his book the power of truth and revelation... The Half Has Never Been Told is a fresh...take on a history we thought we knew too well -- the history of a people who were victimized by a medieval brand of capitalism but survived...Baptist adds many new, stark and essential elements to that story. His most important achievement is to show us how the 'dismal science' of economics served to make the lot of slaves even grimmer. Nation Wonderful... Baptist provides meticulous, extensive and comprehensive evidence that capitalism and the wealth it created was absolutely dependent on the forced labor of Africans and African-Americans, downplaying culturalist arguments for Western prosperity. Huffington Post Black Voices blog Quite a gripping read. Baptist weaves deftly between analysis of economic data and narrative prose to paint a picture of American slavery that is pretty different from what you may have learned in high school Social Studies class. Salon Baptist's real achievement is to ground these financial abstractions in the lives of ordinary people. In vivid passages, he describes the sights, smells and suffering of slavery. He writes about individual families torn apart by global markets. Above all, Baptist sets out to show how America's rise to power is inextricable from the suffering of black slaves. Washington Independent Review of Books Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told is an achievement of the first order... With Baptist's meticulous research and comprehensive, chronological approach, the other half of the story has now been told, and told very well. The reader is readily engaged in this scholarly treatment of over 400 pages, thanks to Baptist's narrative style and his skillful interweaving of personal stories from slave and enslaver memoirs and letters with complex political and economic context... Baptist's depiction of the breakup of families, slave coffles in chains, and relentless field toil is heartbreakingly affective and never allows us to forget that it is ultimately impossible to make property of people... This book on 'slavery's second life in the United States' is highly recommended to those who want to understand the evolution of our African-American heritage and its centrality to the nation's political and economic history, not to mention the shameful blow to America's stated ideals. CounterPunch Edward E. Baptist's brilliant book, The Half Has Never Been Told, soars because of the author's decision to root his analysis in the human dimension. The book transcends anything that has previously been written about slavery... In short, Baptist has humanized the lives of American slaves, liberated them from one of the most inhumane systems mankind ever devised. The entire country needs to do the same. Kirkus A substantial new history - possibly the most important work on slavery in a generation. Booklist, starred review Baptist renders history and economics with the power of prose that seeks to tell a fuller story than has been told of American slavery... An insightful look at U.S. slavery and its controversial role in the much-celebrated story of American capitalism. Library Journal, starred review Baptist has written a book that truly deepens and broadens our understanding of slavery... Professional historians and lay readers will pore over this book for years to come. Essential for all readers interested in American history and the history of slavery. Publishers Weekly An unapologetic, damning, and grisly account of slavery's foundational place in the emergence of America as a global superpower, balancing the macro lens of statistics and national trends with intimate slave narratives. Delivered in a voice that fluidly incorporates both academic objectivity and coarse language... Baptist's chronicle exposes the taint of blood in virtually all of the wealth that Americans have inherited from their forebears, making it a rewarding read for anyone interested in U.S.A.'s dark history. Kirkus, starred review A...myth-busting work that pursues how the world profited from American slavery... This is a complicated story involving staggering scholarship that adds greatly to our understanding of the history of the United States. Edward Ball, author of Slaves in the Family This book reveals a dirty secret about American business, and how commerce first boomed before the Civil War. Baptist unearths a big, nasty story: in the North and the South, slavery was the tainted fuel that kindled the fires of U.S. capitalism and made the country grow. Edward Ayers, President of Richmond University and author of the Bancroft Prize-winning In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America This book, quite simply, offers the fullest and most powerful account we have of the evolution of slavery in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War. Baptist's account is eloquent, humane, passionate, and necessary. Peniel Joseph, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University, and author of Stokely: A Life The Half Has Never Been Told is a true marvel. Groundbreaking, thoroughly researched, expansive, and provocative it will force scholars of slavery and its aftermath to reconsider long held assumptions about the 'peculiar institution's' relationship to American capitalism and contemporary issues of race and democracy. Engagingly written and bursting with fresh, powerful, and provocative insights, this book deserves to be widely read, discussed, and debated. Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North Edward Baptist's book belongs on the very short shelf of field-defining histories of slavery. It will be read and debated for a long time to come.