"Few historians have more skillfully integrated economic with social, intellectual and political history to demonstrate both the importance and the limits of economic developments--the material reality and the perception of it.... Pleasurable as well as instructive reading for anyone interested in the most fateful of our national crimes and the most fearful of our national crises.... A] splendid book." --Eugene D. Genovese, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Written to accompany Without Consent or Contract, this book is part of a two volume set which has been designed to fill out the portrait of slavery with detailed analyses of specific areas. This book looks at markets and production.

Nobel laureate Robert Fogel's compelling new study examines health, nutrition and technology from 1700 to 2100. Although throughout most of human history, chronic malnutrition has been the norm, a synergy between improvements in productive technology and human physiology has enabled humans to more than double their average longevity and to increase their body size by over fifty percent over the past three centuries. Larger, healthier humans have contributed to the acceleration of economic growth and technological change, resulting in reduced economic inequality, declining hours of work and a...