Winner of the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction Shortlisted for the 2014 Cundill Prize in Historical LiteratureFrom the revered historian, the long-awaited conclusion of the magisterial history of slavery and emancipation in Western culture that has been nearly fifty years in the making. David Brion Davis is one of the foremost historians of the twentieth century, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and nearly every award given by the historical profession. Now, with The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation, Davis brings his staggeringly ambitious, prizewinning trilogy on slavery in Western culture to a close. Once again, Davis offers original and penetrating insights into what slavery and emancipation meant to Americans. He explores how the Haitian Revolution respectively terrified and inspired white and black Americans, hovering over the antislavery debates like a bloodstained ghost, and he offers a surprising analysis of the complex and misunderstood significance of colonization—the project to move freed slaves back to Africa—to members of both races and all political persuasions. He vividly portrays the dehumanizing impact of slavery, as well as the generally unrecognized importance of freed slaves to abolition. Most of all, Davis presents the age of emancipation as a model for reform and as probably the greatest landmark of willed moral progress in human history. This is a monumental and harrowing undertaking following the century of struggle, rebellion, and warfare that led to the eradication of slavery in the new world.  An in-depth investigation, a rigorous colloquy of ideas, ranging from Frederick Douglass to Barack Obama, from British industrial “wage slavery” to the Chicago World’s Fair, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation is a brilliant conclusion to one of the great works of American history. Above all, Davis captures how America wrestled with demons of its own making, and moved forward.

Examines the emergence of antislavery sentiments and activity in Britain and America in light of prevailing social and ideological conditions. Bibliogs

Links the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism in a history of the institution of slavery in the United States.

Product Description: In this engaging book, David Brion Davis offers an illuminating perspective on American slavery. Starting with a long view across the temporal and spatial boundaries of world slavery, he traces continuities from the ancient world to the era of exploration, with its expanding markets and rise in consumption of such products as sugar, tobacco, spices, and chocolate, to the conditions of the New World settlement that gave rise to a dependence on the forced labor of millions of African slaves...read more

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Presents a history of slavery with emphasis on the role of the church (view table of contents)

Through a wealth of letters, speeches, and other primary documents, a wide-ranging survey of American history up to Reconstruction, co-written by a Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winner, presents the voices of those who shaped the past. UP.

Analyzes American attitudes and reactions to revolutions

Product Description: For more than twenty years David Brion Davis has been recognized as a leading authority on the moral and ideological responses to slavery in the Western world. From Homicide to Slavery, Davis's first book of collected essays, brings together selections reflecting his wide-ranging interests in colonial history, Afro-American history, the social sciences, and American literature...read more

Product Description: Great book!

Product Description: For more than twenty years David Brion Davis has been recognized as a leading authority on the moral and ideological responses to slavery in the Western world. From Homicide to Slavery, Davis's first book of collected essays, brings together selections reflecting his wide-ranging interests in colonial history, Afro-American history, the social sciences, and American literature...read more

Product Description: The material in this book represents in large part lectures delivered at the invitation of the faculty and trustees of the Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, on the James Sprunt foundation. For publication, these lectures were revised and in some cases amplified...read more