River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom

(Harvard University Press) Placing the Cotton Kingdom at the center of worldwide webs of exchange and exploitation, this new transnational account of American slavery revises our understanding of the practice and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the Civil War. At the center of the story are the enslaved people; the book weaves together the details of daily life in the Cotton Kingdom from a variety of sources and depicts all aspects of this time. Johnson is Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.