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. 'The Half Has Never Been Told is a true marvel. 'Baptist has a fleet, persuasive take on the materialist underpinnings of the 'peculiar institution.''― Colson Whitehead, Mashable I saw the legacy of human misery underpinning it all.'― Jesmyn War, author of Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped Every time I left my house after reading, I saw the world differently. 'It taught me so much about slavery and how slavery enabled America to become America. This book gives you that, in a stunningly readable, heartbreaking form.

or even of the world -without an understanding of how its development was driven by 19th century slavery. 'You cannot understand the economy of the U.S. Above all, Baptist sets out to show how America's rise to power is inextricable from the suffering of black slaves.'― Salon He writes about individual families torn apart by global markets. In vivid passages, he describes the sights, smells and suffering of slavery. 'Baptist's real achievement is to ground these financial abstractions in the lives of ordinary people. The Half Has Never Been Told's underlying argument is persuasive.'― New York Times Book Review 'Baptist has a knack for explaining complex financial matters in lucid prose. 'By far the finest account of the deep interplay of the slave trade.and the development of the U.S. 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.'― Nation Baptist turns the long-accepted argument that slavery was economically inefficient on its head, and argues that it was an integral part of America's economic rise.'― Daily Beast

'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.'

Edward baptist the half was never told