Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

Ira Berlin in "Many Thousands Gone" has made a very important contribution to the growing literature attempting to understand both the big picture and the daily details of slavery. As his subtitle suggests, his work focuses on the first two centuries of slavery in North America. Berlin's primary (and well-documented) thesis is that slave culture was not one monolithic culture, but several different cultures depending upon the era and the area of North American enslavement. Additionally, Berlin highlights that slavery was racist and classist, an interpretation which does not minimize the evils of racism, but also exposes the evils of classism. Though in other works by the same author, readers find first-hand accounts of the horrors of slavery in the words of the enslaved, such documentation is less evident in this work. An increase in such documentation would have strengthened the already excellent "Many Thousand Gone." Still, the overall message and "feel" of "Many Thousands Gone" does accurately and powerfully depict the agony and inhumanity of African American slavery. Berlin engages the important issue of the slave's choice of or refusal to choose the master's religion. Including a small sampling of the slave narratives (the majority of which evidence acceptance of Christianity) and the myriad slave conversion accounts, would have provided added depth to this fine book. Converting slaves, by their own accounts, did not see themselves as converting to their masters' religion. Instead, they saw themselves rejecting their masters' hypocritical distortion of Christianity and receiving Christ and Christianity, cleansed of lies and replete with the message of eternal freedom spirituality and internal freedom in Christ. For the broad panorama of early enslavement, look no further than "Many Thousands Gone." Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.

Brought for college class. Arrived in excellent condition. Purchased new book at great price. Better then campus store prices.

The academic world has been waiting for this book for the last eighteen years. Berlin, already one of the dean's of slavery studies in America, has written a masterful study of the entire evolution of American slavery from it's very beginings to it's terrible highpoint, during the Ante-Bellum period in the South. The Genius of Berlin, however, is to understand this development in a way in which both the location of a slave and the time in which he or she lived affected his or her life. People who have studied slavery for too long have described it as a static experience, one that never elvolved, changed, or got better or worse. With his wonderful book, Berlin has ended all this and brought us into a new era of slavery studies. Many Thousands Gone is a fine book to take us into the next century as we continue to try to understand America.