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Washington at the Plow
- The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office. For more than 40 years, he devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture.
Washington at the Plow depicts the "first farmer of America" as a leading practitioner of the New Husbandry, a transatlantic movement that spearheaded advancements in crop rotation. A tireless experimentalist, Washington pulled up his tobacco and switched to wheat production, leading the way for the rest of the country. He filled his library with the latest agricultural treatises and pioneered land-management techniques that he hoped would guide small farmers, strengthen agrarian society, and ensure the prosperity of the nation.
He saw enslaved field workers and artisans as means of agricultural development and tried repeatedly to adapt slave labor to new kinds of farming. But Washington eventually found that forced labor could not achieve the productivity he desired. His inability to reconcile ideals of scientific farming and rural order with race-based slavery led him to reconsider the traditional foundations of the Virginia plantation. As Bruce Ragsdale shows, it was the inefficacy of chattel slavery, as much as moral revulsion at the practice, that informed Washington's famous decision to free his slaves after his death.
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Story4 out of 5 stars 79
Appalachia - among the most storied and yet least understood regions in America - has long been associated with poverty and backwardness. But how did this image arise, and what exactly does it mean? In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll launches an original investigation into the history of Appalachia and its place in US history, with a special emphasis on how generations of its inhabitants lived, worked, survived, and depended on natural resources held in common.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Almost unlistenable
- By Golf Fan on 09-13-18
By: Steven Stoll
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Capitalism and Slavery
- Third Edition
- By: Eric Williams
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Historical Reading for the Caribbean
- By Trinirastawoman on 06-01-22
By: Eric Williams
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1619
- Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy
- By: James Horn
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 159
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 123
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 123
Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly - the first gathering of a representative governing body in America - came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant!
- By HonestOpin on 05-06-19
By: James Horn
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Empire of Cotton
- A Global History
- By: Sven Beckert
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
- Length: 20 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 554
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 488
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Story4 out of 5 stars 483
Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially recast the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia. We see how industrial capitalism then reshaped these worlds of cotton into an empire, and how this empire transformed the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A New History of Global Capitalism
- By Lucian of Samosata on 03-17-15
By: Sven Beckert
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A Revolution Down on the Farm
- The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929
- By: Paul K. Conkin
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4 out of 5 stars 98
Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent review of farming history in US
- By Joanne on 01-26-14
By: Paul K. Conkin
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The American Slave Coast
- A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry
- By: Ned Sublette, Constance Sublette
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 30 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 133
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 134
The American Slave Coast tells the horrific story of how the slavery business in the United States made the reproductive labor of "breeding women" essential to the expansion of the nation. The book shows how slaves' children, and their children's children, were human savings accounts that were the basis of money and credit. This was so deeply embedded in the economy of the slave states that it could be decommissioned only by emancipation, achieved through the bloodiest war in the history of the United States.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Get "The Half Has Never Been Told" instead!
- By Ary Shalizi on 11-28-16
By: Ned Sublette, and others
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Unworthy Republic
- The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
- By: Claudio Saunt
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 88
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Story5 out of 5 stars 87
In May 1830, the United States formally launched a policy to expel Native Americans from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Justified as a humanitarian enterprise, the undertaking was to be systematic and rational, overseen by Washington's small but growing bureaucracy. But as the policy unfolded over the next decade, thousands of Native Americans died under the federal government's auspices, and thousands of others lost their possessions and homelands in an orgy of fraud, intimidation, and violence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Slow Burn
- By Hervé DuThé on 04-20-20
By: Claudio Saunt
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American Colonies: The Settling of North America
- Penguin History of the United States, Book 1
- By: Alan Taylor
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 21 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 452
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 392
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 390
In the first volume in the Penguin History of the United States series, edited by Eric Foner, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America, from the native inhabitants from millennia past through the decades of Western colonization and conquest and across the entire continent, all the way to the Pacific coast.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent ..
- By aintbuyinit on 09-03-18
By: Alan Taylor
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George Washington: The Founding Father (Eminent Lives)
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
By far the most important figure in the history of the United States, George Washington liberated the 13 colonies from the superior forces of the British Empire against all military odds, and presided over the production and ratification of a constitution that (suitably amended) has lasted for more than 200 years. Yet today, Washington remains a distant figure to many Americans, a failing that acclaimed author Paul Johnson sets out to rectify with this brilliantly vivid, sharply etched portrait.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Ideology interferes with story line
- By Miranda on 05-01-15
By: Paul Johnson
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The Ledger and the Chain
- How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America
- By: Joshua D. Rothman
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men - who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South - were essential to slavery's expansion and fueled the growth and prosperity of the United States. In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This is a Historical Study! And a Great Read
- By BookwormHLH on 08-15-22
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Dawn of Detroit
- A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits
- By: Tiya Miles
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree - both native and African American - in the frontier outpost of Detroit.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great!
- By Melissa Eisner on 05-30-18
By: Tiya Miles
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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
- By: Walter Rodney, Angela Y. Davis - foreword
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 523
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 443
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Story5 out of 5 stars 434
Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the West and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the repercussions of European colonialism in Africa remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Superb must read for everyone
- By Joy on 04-16-19
By: Walter Rodney, and others
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The Strange Career of William Ellis
- The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire
- By: Karl Jacoby
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor of a devastating secret: He was not, in fact, from Mexico at all. Rather, he had begun life as a slave named William Ellis, born on a cotton plantation in Texas during the waning years of King Cotton.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating Tale of Racial Passing
- By Steven Schuster on 06-10-16
By: Karl Jacoby
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Ways and Means
- Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 199
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 172
Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the “more perfect union” that had first drawn him to politics.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perspective that matters - financing the Civil War
- By Edgewater on 07-04-22
By: Roger Lowenstein
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The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears
- By: Theda Perdue, Michael Green
- Narrated by: George Wilson
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
Acclaimed historians Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green paint a moving portrait of the infamous Trail of Tears. Despite protests from statesmen like Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, a dubious 1838 treaty drove 17,000 mostly Christian Cherokee from their lush Appalachian homeland to barren plains beyond the Mississippi. For 4,000, this brutal forced march lead only to their deaths.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great audio book
- By Steve on 03-23-08
By: Theda Perdue, and others