The Half Has Never Been Told
by Edward E. Baptist
The economy wasn't built despite slavery. It was slavery.
For you if
you've heard "the economy was built on slavery" but never fully understood how
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The founding myth of American capitalism is that slavery was a moral failing — tragic, but separate from the prosperity it built alongside. Baptist dismantles that lie with meticulous, devastating evidence. Slavery wasn't the exception to American economic growth: it was American economic growth — the forced productivity, the financial instruments built around enslaved bodies, the infrastructure that made every subsequent American institution possible. The Half Has Never Been Told is the book that makes Juneteenth make sense, because it shows exactly what June 19, 1865 was the end of — and what it wasn't.
Where This Book Lives
- Themes
- capital machinery
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