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A review by myc_w
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
4.0
In The Half Has Never Been Told Baptist creates an incisive and engaging historical account of the ways in which slavery and its legacy is entangled with American capitalism. For a history, it leans less on the at times incomprehensible turgidity of academic wring and more an a florid, poetic style that is easily accessible. In fact, Baptist uses a narrative framing structure that seeks to take the real lived experiences or slave narratives and use them to create entry points into the complex interwoven economics systems that built the United States.
This is both a pro and a con. Some popular histories fail to reach an audience for overwrought or dense academese, and this book avoids that particular pitfall. However, the flowery and narrativized history here sometimes obfuscates what is being articulated as a citation or analysis of fact and those things that may have been embellished for the sake of telling an accessible story. To be clear, all of the primary events that Baptist cites are things that are verifiable and his analyses and conclusions are well-supported. But the framing of complex nationally (and globally) connected economies and the intricate political issues that informed the development of the US with personal narratives, while humanizing the issue, also creates an opportunity for bad-faith readings. At times, Baptist fills in the gaps in personal stories by imagining things that may have or could have happened. This only occurs in the the narrative framing devices he uses as a lens to access the more complicated (and accurately cited) facts. And while I appreciate the artistry and humanity that he brings to the issue, these more poetic moments of framing also create potential gaps in the armor of his argument.
Overall, I think this is a really good look at the ways in which slavery undergirded the development of the US economy and has informed the legal and economic structures we see today. If you are okay with a little bit of purple prose as a narrative device to introduce complex facts and issues, this is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it.
This is both a pro and a con. Some popular histories fail to reach an audience for overwrought or dense academese, and this book avoids that particular pitfall. However, the flowery and narrativized history here sometimes obfuscates what is being articulated as a citation or analysis of fact and those things that may have been embellished for the sake of telling an accessible story. To be clear, all of the primary events that Baptist cites are things that are verifiable and his analyses and conclusions are well-supported. But the framing of complex nationally (and globally) connected economies and the intricate political issues that informed the development of the US with personal narratives, while humanizing the issue, also creates an opportunity for bad-faith readings. At times, Baptist fills in the gaps in personal stories by imagining things that may have or could have happened. This only occurs in the the narrative framing devices he uses as a lens to access the more complicated (and accurately cited) facts. And while I appreciate the artistry and humanity that he brings to the issue, these more poetic moments of framing also create potential gaps in the armor of his argument.
Overall, I think this is a really good look at the ways in which slavery undergirded the development of the US economy and has informed the legal and economic structures we see today. If you are okay with a little bit of purple prose as a narrative device to introduce complex facts and issues, this is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it.