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The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
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The Half Has Never Been Told
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Summary
Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians
Winner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize
A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved people
Americans 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 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.
Told through the intimate testimonies of survivors of slavery, plantation records, newspapers, as well as the words of politicians and entrepreneurs, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.
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Critic reviews
"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.” (Wall Street Journal)
"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.” (New York Times Book Review)
"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." (Los Angeles Times)
What listeners say about The Half Has Never Been Told
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- John Paul McGroarty
- 16-06-23
Very good introduction to the complexity of slavery and it’s economy and the emergence of transatlantic capitalism.
Very good introduction to the complexity of slavery and it’s economy and the emergence of transatlantic capitalism.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- ibielterrible
- 19-01-22
Good but full of myopic statements
Absolutely, we need to have the conversation this book is bringing to the front: there are a lot of positives and great points explained in great details, however doesn’t seem that the author researched the topic in the depth that is required cover the subject. If u consider only slavery in the USA on its own u are missing 95% of the picture: slave trade was globalized goods business and the South USA was rather a back water as opposed to dominant force.
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