Books like Slavery and the making of America by James Oliver Horton

A chilling memoir detailing Solomon Northup's harrowing experience as a captive on a Louisiana plantation for twelve years, from 1841 to 1853.

Douglas A. Blackmon exposes a hidden chapter of American history—an "Age of Neoslavery" that subjected African Americans to forced labor and debt slavery from the late 19th century through the 1940s.

Ira Berlin traces the evolution of African‑American life from the first enslaved arrivals in the early 1600s through the American Revolution, revealing how slavery, labor, and race were continually redefined in the shaping of the United States.

From Slavery to Freedom chronicles the rise of slavery, the blending of European and African cultures in the New World, and the development of a distinct Black culture and resistance in the United States.

America's slave past is being analyzed as never before, yet it remains one of the most contentious issues in U.S. memory. In recent years, the culture wars over the way that slavery is remembered and taught have reached a new crescendo. From the argument about the display of the Confederate flag over the state house in Columbia, South Carolina, to the dispute over Thomas Jefferson's relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and the ongoing debates about reparations, the questions grow ever more urgent and more difficult. Edited by noted historians James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, this collection explores current controversies and offers a bracing analysis of how people remember their past and how the lessons they draw influence American politics and culture today. Bringing together some of the nation's most respected historians, including Ira Berlin, David W. Blight, and Gary B. Nash, this is a major contribution to the unsettling but crucial debate about the significance of slavery and its meaning for racial reconciliation. - Back cover.

Ira Berlin’s Pulitzer‑winning study traces African‑American slavery in the United States from the seventeenth century to its abolition, linking each era of slave generations to the broader Atlantic and American historical transformations.

"Winner of several national awards including the 1967 Pulitzer Prize, this classic study by David Brion Davis has given new direction to the historical and sociological research of society's attitude towards slavery. Davis depicts the various ways different societies have responded to the intrinsic contradictions of slavery from antiquity to the early 1770's in order to establish the uniqueness of the abolitionists' response. While slavery has always caused considerable social and psychological tension, Western culture has associated it with certain religious and philosophical doctrines that gave it the highest sanction. The contradiction of slavery grew more profound when it became closely linked with American colonization, which had as its basic foundation the desire and opportunity to create a more perfect society. Davis provides a comparative analysis of slave systems in the Old World, a discussion of the early attitudes towards American slavery, and a detailed exploration of the early protests against Negro bondage, as well as the religious, literary, and philosophical developments that contributed to both sides in the controversies of the late eighteenth century. This exemplary introduction to the history of slavery in Western culture presents the traditions in thought and value that gave rise to the attitudes of both abolitionists and defenders of slavery in the late eighteenth century as well as the nineteenth century."--Publisher description.

Sterling Stuckey’s study examines how African cultural traditions shaped the shared identity of enslaved peoples in the American South, highlighting a persistent Afro‑centric ethos that influenced race relations after emancipation.