Slavery in America

Edited by Burton (history, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), this two-volume encyclopedia examines the affects of American slavery on the everyday lives of the slaves and the slaveholders, of course, but also to a lesser extent on non-slaveholding whites, Native Americans, and free blacks. The encyclopedia's approximately 240 scholarly essays are arranged thematically and provide treatment of life in Africa, capture, and the Middle Passage; the slave trade and the slave economy; the different types and systems of slave work; family structures, relationships among slaves, master-slave relationships, and the internal slave economy; song and dance, crafts and slave handicrafts, expressions of African heritage, games, holidays and celebrations, and customs and practices; religion; health, medicine, and nutrition; regulation of the institutions of slavery and decisions leading to emancipation; forms of resistance and rebellion; reactions to slavery in the wider culture; the geography of slavery; and slavery in the American Revolution and the Civil War. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)