"A Valuable Addition to the Growing Literature on Slavery and American Development"

"It is hardly a secret that slavery is deeply embedded in our nation's history. But many Americans still see it as essentially a footnote, an exception to a dominant narrative of the expansion of liberty on this continent. If the various elements of 'The Half Has Never Been Told' are not entirely pulled together, its underlying argument is persuasive: Slavery was essential to American development and, indeed, to the violent construction of the capitalist world in which we live."


Eric Foner in The New York Times reviews Edward E. Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told: Slaver and the Making of American Capitalism.