How Slavery in the Americas Matters: The Origins of Global Power

"No historian on either side of the Atlantic has captured this sweeping, epic story of inhumanity, mass migration, cultural transformation, and global empire quite like James Walvin. Walvin is to slavery and the slave trade in the Atlantic world what Dickens was to English literature in the nineteenth century. He writes like a perfectly tuned machine that cannot be stopped; the results are lyrical and deeply informed. With each new book, Walvin widens our view--he is at home in telling this tale in Jamaica, on the Gold Coast, at the quays of Liverpool, or in the tobacco fields of Maryland. A World Transformed is timely and will reach the hearts and minds of Walvin's multitudes of readers."--David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University, and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom "Walvin draws on his deep well of knowledge to offer an ambitious and capacious account of the ways in which slavery has shaped our world. This extremely compelling and important contribution draws on the key scholarship throughout, but it does so in a way that allows readers to understand connections and the big picture. It will help everyone grapple with this vital topic."--Laurent Dubois, author of The Banjo: America's African Instrument and Haiti: The Aftershocks of History "While it may be true that, in William Wells Brown's famous phrase, slavery 'never can be represented, ' Walvin describes with admirable brevity the contours of its massive global impact. Drawing on more than fifty years of research and reflection, he has produced a reader-friendly study of the great historical crime that was foundational to our modern world. It's ideal for students but should be read by anyone interested in the history of the Americas, Europe, or Africa."--Ned Sublette, coauthor of The American Slave Coast and author of The World That Made New Orleans