Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market 58327th Edition

“The focus of this fine book, which is at once doggedly scrupulous and quietly passionate, is the slave market that operated in New Orleans in the years before the Civil War… An area of recent and still tentative study has to do with the effect the slaves had on the people who bought and sold them; to this Johnson makes important and original contributions… In what it tells us about the slaves, Soul by Soul adds more detail to what is by now a staggering body of information. It is in telling us more about what slavery did to the men and women who stood on the privileged side of the divide that Johnson performs his most useful service. Slavery brutalized its victims, but it also corrupted its masters. It was, in every single regard, unspeakable.”―Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

“A forceful reminder that life in the Crescent City after the battle wasn't all toleration… [This is an] elegant and intelligent book.”―Nicholas Lemann, New Yorker

“Just when readers might have thought nothing new could be written about slavery, Walter Johnson's behind-the-scenes look at the New Orleans slave market unmasks the brutalities of trafficking in human flesh in a terrifying, unforgettable manner. Mr. Johnson's carefully researched saga picks up after the 1808 U.S. ban on trans-Atlantic slave trading. Far from shutting down slavery, the prohibition simply boosted domestic slave trafficking… Soul by Soul gives context to its content, making it a fascinating 'insider's' view of a world created by slavery.”―Meta G. Carstarphen, Dallas Morning News

“[Soul by Soul has] an interesting and compelling argument… Where Johnson succeeds…[is in] using the New Orleans slave market, its contents and its customers as a way to understand a culture that no longer exists.”―Matthew DeBord, Salon

“Johnson's extremely rich and subtle work, the first in-depth look at the slave markets, never lets the reader forget the reality that this was a trade in human beings… Among the most striking and important aspects of the book is the way Johnson makes clear the resistance of enslaved African-Americans to becoming mere items of property… Johnson teaches us that, despite the insistence of white slaveholders that slaves were simply possessions, enslaved African-Americans routinely asserted their humanity and forced slaveholders to take this into account when bringing people to market. At the same time that Johnson keeps the spotlight squarely on the humanity of enslaved African-Americans, he also presents a complicated account of those who went to the markets to buy… Anyone interested in American history must strive to understand something about slavery, and as Johnson shows us, the event of the sale of one human being to another is at the center of the story of slavery. The horror of that transaction remains so powerful that even today descendants of its victims, as well as of its perpetrators, are still trying to comprehend it. Walter Johnson's important book makes a valuable contribution to that endeavor.”―Judith Weisenfeld, Newsday

“Walter Johnson has gone where no historian has gone before: inside the slave markets of the antebellum South… Johnson, through his book, has spoken for the unknown thousands who couldn't speak for themselves… Johnson has given a voice to those voiceless slaves whose descendants owe it to their ancestors to read this book.”―Gregory Kane, Baltimore Sun

“A challenging, eye-opening study that deserves a wide audience… Johnson delves into the contradictions and complexities that arise when human beings are treated as commodities… He gets inside the heads of slaves, traders and buyers in order to explore the desires, fears and strategies they brought to this inhuman transaction… Soul by Soul shines a penetrating light on the brutal heart of the South's peculiar institution.”―Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle

“Soul by Soul is a stunning excavation of the past, a book that is sure to be read and debated for years to come. Walter Johnson creates a common identity for the slaves by letting their voices give shape to the narrative. In an age such as ours, so premised on individual liberty, the author performs a kind of moral autopsy on the mindset of slave owning.”―Jason Berry, Gambit Weekly

“Johnson tells us many things about [the] commodification of human beings, some of which you probably know and others that are more surprising… Johnson's book covers wide territory, from the petty encounters of small slave traders to the extraordinary power of slavery in the southern economy.”―Peter Walker, Financial Times

“Johnson provides the fullest, most penetrating examination of the antebellum slave market to date. Using slave narratives, court records, planters' letters, and more, Johnson enters the slave pens and showrooms of the New Orleans slave market to observe how slavery turned men and women into merchandise and how slaves resisted such efforts to steal their humanity. He tracks the slaves from their march to the market to the terrifying moments of sale and adaptation to new masters, places, and work. Johnson's original, important, and brilliantly presented book makes a case for the slave market as 'best place to see slavery.' It was there that self-interest, concepts of race, and the slave 'community' came together to reveal how white men traded their own souls for a stake in human property. An essential book for anyone who wants to understand why slavery matters.”―Randall M. Miller, Library Journal

Walter Johnson is Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.