Summary and Reviews of Slavery by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon

Media Reviews

Chicago Tribune An astonishing book. . . . It will challenge and change your understanding of what we were as Americans-and of what we are.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution The genius of Blackmon's book is that it illuminates both the real human tragedy and the profoundly corrupting nature of the Old South slavery as it transformed to establish a New South social order

St Louis Post-Dispatch [A] formidably researched, powerfully written, wrenchingly detailed narrative of the mistreatment of millions of blacks in America, mistreatment that kept African-Americans in shackles of the body and mind long after slavery had officially ended.

The New York Times Shocking. . . . Eviscerates one of our schoolchildren's most basic assumptions: that slavery in America ended with the Civil War.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Blackmon's book reveals in devastating detail the legal and commercial forces that created this neoslavery along with deeply moving and totally appalling personal testimonies of survivors. Every incident in this book is true, he writes; one wishes it were not so.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin The torment that Mr. Blackmon catalogs is, if anything, understated here. But it loudly and stunningly speaks for itself.

 Bill Cosby Urgent, definitive, powerful. The most important work of history published in a very long time.

 Harriet A. Washington author of Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. To read this book is to cross an intellectual Rubicon: Once opened, you will no longer find it possible to relegate slavery to the distant past. Once opened, this book will change you, and how you perceive race relations in America.

 Jay Winik, author of April 1865: The Month That Saved America and The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World. For those who think the conversation about race or exploitation in America is over, they should read Douglas Blackmon’s cautionary tale, Slavery by Another Name. It is at once provocative and thought-provoking, sobering and heart-rending.