"My father had a little joke that made light of our legacy as a family that had once owned slaves." So begins Edward Ball’s compelling family memoir, a narrative that reaches far beyond the realm of his own kin to explore the legacy of slavery in America, an inheritance at the heart of the nation’s most obvious and most hidden history. Exploring its deep roots and intricate branches, Ball illuminates the subject with an uncommon blend of intelligence, empathy, and prodigious research; still, it is his personal perspective—shared, ultimately, with descendants of the Ball slaves—that gives his tale its startling inspiration and reverberating power