Despite its huge span of time and space, it is a performance impressive in its ability to detect patterns and to make useful generalizations without severing its connections to the daily lives of real people. Many Thousands Gone covers the 200 years following the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia in 1619. With this ambitious and deceptively clear survey of African-American slavery, Berlin now places himself in that category of major contributors. Our understanding of American slavery has been radically altered during the course of the last two generations through hundreds of monographs and by such gifted historians as Kenneth Stampp, Eugene Genovese, Herbert Gutman, Nathan Huggins, and John Hope Franklin, to each of whom Berlin makes a respectful bow in his acknowledgments.
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