I have recently written about some new books on the history
of slavery that I did not like. I just finished one that I really did like: A
Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia
by Stephen Dunn. It is a remarkable work, following the lives of hundreds of
slaves on two large plantations: Mesopotamia in Jamaica and Mount Airy on the
Northern Neck of Virginia, not far from where I live. The bloggers at the Junto devoted several days to
discussion of the book and an interview with the author. One of the things that
I most enjoyed was the description of the process of historical
research. I thought this book was a great example of the historian taking his
reader along with him to the archives, describing the difficulties in finding
sources, the limits of those sources, and how he made certain inferences from
those sources.
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