{"product_id":"in-the-shadow-of-the-great-house-a-history-of-the-plantation-in-america-9781631498374","title":"In the Shadow of the Great House: A History of the Plantation in America","description":"\u003cp\u003eOver the last few decades, and especially in the last ten years, our understanding of slavery has been transformed by the work of many talented scholars. We have learned a great deal about the actions of enslavers, the struggles and victories of the enslaved, and how the afterlives of American slavery persist into the present. Yet Dan Rood's \u003cem\u003eIn the Shadow of the Great House\u003c\/em\u003e is one of the first contemporary books to focus on the primary engine of slavery, race, and capitalism in this country: the plantation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plantation was invented on the small Atlantic island of São Tomé in the 1500s, and the island also became the site, soon enough, of the first slave revolt. The brutal technology was then perfected in Barbados, where planters worked tens of thousands of African captives to their deaths in sugar factories. But it was in the United States, Rood shows, that the plantation found its most powerful manifestations. In Virginia, Carolina, and then the Deep South, successive plantation revolutions transformed slavery into a much more rigid and oppressive institution. While prejudice certainly preceded the plantation, incomparably wealthy planters now insisted on a rightless, eternally available, \"increasing\" source of labor, and in the process reinvented human bondage and stamped it onto a single race.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a narrative that sweeps across four hundred years of American history, Rood reveals that the plantation did not die after the Civil War. It metastasized. From the advent of sharecropping in the late nineteenth century to the rise of cotton in mid-twentieth century California to today's chicken processing plants--which sit on the same land once occupied by plantations and are staffed largely by migrant workers--the plantation has cast a long shadow over American life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEven as he describes how the always-evolving plantation spread across much of the landscape, devouring people and nature in equal measure, Rood documents the \"dark retreats\" carved out of plantation life by the enslaved. It was the enslaved--those caught up in the plantation's treadmill, those who were thrown violently into the gears of its machinery--who offered the most clear-eyed understanding of how it worked, and what these behemoths told us, and still tell us, about our country.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Daniel Rood\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e W. W. Norton \u0026amp; Company\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/17\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 528\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.60lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.20h x 6.50w x 1.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781631498374\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/01\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/01\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRood, Daniel:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eDaniel Rood\u003c\/strong\u003e is an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia specializing in the history of Atlantic slavery. He authored \u003cem\u003eThe Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean\u003c\/em\u003e. He lives in Athens, Georgia.","brand":"booksdeli.com","offers":[{"title":"Daniel Rood \/ Hardcover \/ English","offer_id":47754041393309,"sku":"9781631498374","price":56.82,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0619\/5648\/9373\/files\/img_e9b6f154-aeef-4c51-8002-fd486e0ccee5.jpg?v=1774331849","url":"https:\/\/booksdeli.com\/products\/in-the-shadow-of-the-great-house-a-history-of-the-plantation-in-america-9781631498374","provider":"booksdeli.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}