PDF God's Foolishness: Poems by Philip Daingerfield Stephenson in History

Description

Robert William Fogel was in the vanguard of those revisionists who in the mid--twentieth century challenged the prevailing historical canon on American slavery. The "slavery debates" encompassed a reexamination of almost every aspect of American slavery and became one front in a battle waged over the place of cliometrics -- the use of quantitative data and statistical methods to analyze historical problems. Fogel and Stanley Engerman's 1974 groundbreaking book; Time on the Cross; applied cliometrics to the study of slavery; revealing it to be a profitable and efficient labor system; and their book remains a fiercely debated work. Now; in an enlightening memoir; Fogel chronicles the controversies surrounding American slavery over four decades and the emergence of a new generation of intellectual and political historians who questioned the progressive synthesis. The Slavery Debates is an informative summary of the literature on the economics of American slavery; offering a valuable glimpse into one of the most interesting chapters of the historical profession.