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The Slave Ship: A Human History
The Slave Ship: A Human History
The Slave Ship: A Human History
Audiobook13 hours

The Slave Ship: A Human History

Written by Marcus Rediker

Narrated by David Drummond

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

For more than three centuries, slave ships carried millions of people from the coasts of Africa across the Atlantic to the New World. Much is known of the slave trade and the American plantation complex, but little of the ships that made it all possible. In The Slave Ship, award-winning historian Marcus Rediker draws on thirty years of research in maritime archives to create an unprecedented history of these vessels and the human drama acted out on their rolling decks. He reconstructs in chilling detail the lives, deaths, and terrors of captains, sailors, and the enslaved aboard a "floating dungeon" trailed by sharks. From the young African kidnapped from his village and sold to the slavers by a neighboring tribe, to the would-be priest who takes a job as a sailor on a slave ship only to be horrified by the evil he sees, to the captain who relishes having "a hell of my own," Rediker illuminates the lives of people who were thought to have left no trace.

This is a tale of tragedy and terror, but also an epic of resilience, survival, and the creation of something entirely new, something that could only be called African American. Rediker restores the slave ship to its rightful place alongside the plantation as a formative institution of slavery, as a place where a profound and still haunting history of race, class, and modern capitalism was made.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 15, 2007
ISBN9781400174799
The Slave Ship: A Human History
Author

Marcus Rediker

Marcus Rediker (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Research Fellow at the Collège d’études mondiales in Paris. He is the author of numerous prize-winning books, including The Many-Headed Hydra (with Peter Linebaugh), The Slave Ship, and The Amistad Rebellion. He produced the award-winning documentary film Ghosts of Amistad (Tony Buba, director), about the popular memory of the Amistad rebellion of 1839 in contemporary Sierra Leone.

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Reviews for The Slave Ship

Rating: 3.8289473657894737 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A candid, vivid and very moving account of facts. Fantastic read!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Well-researched and detailed description of the Atlantic slave trade & human relationships in the slave ship. Perhaps it could have been organized a little differently, because it gets very repetitive in stating the author's main points. However, the individual stories of slave trades & life at sea for the captives, sailors, and captain were very informative and moving.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A good overview of the slave trade in general combined with a detailed survey of life on board. Interesting to learn that the white crew members were treated nearly as horribly as the black slaves. A very powerful book..
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Powerful topic; captures the horror. The only audio book in my collection. The audio edition is read by an actor with a wonderfully resonant voice, yet the reading lacks passion ... made it hard to stay engaged.