Soul by Soul
Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

This book is a crown jewel in American slave studies and opens up doors may historians assumed were permanently rusted shut from history's rainstorms. As part of my graduate school coursework, this review is of Walter Johnson's seminal narrative illustrating slave life in the New Orleans markets. Th......more

I quickly realised that this is an academic book, but this did not put me off. In fact, I found it highly readable - probably because I am just a girlie swot at heart! The author uses different perspectives and tales which, as well as being interesting, are often rather surprising. For example, they......more

Academic exploration of a New Orleans Slave market made some interesting, and relevant points such as ..."slaveholders depended upon the world to be relatively constant: they depended upon being in the same bed, answering to the same name, and tasting the same food in the same way when they woke up......more