Commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade Act, this collection of eleven stories follows the lives of slaves of every kind around the world. Join African Queen Jinga as she unites the tribes of Ndongo against the invading Portuguese. Watch John Blanke as he becomes the first black trumpeter to play for the King Henry VIII. Meet Harriet Tubman as she helps escaped slaves flee along the Underground Railroad to freedom. Moving, exciting and often funny, these true stories span centuries and the globe, feature famous historical figures such as William Wilberforce and Catherine of Aragon and remind us all of the true horrors of slavery in all its forms.

Two businessmen seduced by the opportunities of the Gold Coast. Two lovers twice denied happiness by another man's greed. Two young men of mixed African and European heritage exploited by unscrupulous leaders from both worlds. One boy who makes his own destiny. In 1667 Samuel Hastings and his business partner, Albert Dross, set sail for Africa to earn their fortunes in trans-Atlantic slave trafficking. This decision will change the lives of hundreds, inciting kings to war and tearing families apart to support a trade that will spread untold wealth-and shame-across three continents and two centuries.Set during the early years of the slave trade in West Africa, Seeds of Slavery uncovers painful truths about the tribal leaders and European traders who created a global exchange of human lives for gold and guns that would dislocate families, weaken identities, and impart a legacy of loss and pain for generations to come.

A ground-breaking, personal exploration of America's obsession with continuing human bondage from the editor of the New York Times-bestselling Barracoon. Freedom and equality are the watchwords of American democracy. But like justice, freedom and equality are meaningless when there is no corresponding practical application of the ideals they represent. Physical, bodily liberty is fundamental to every American's personal sovereignty. And yet, millions of Americans--including author Deborah Plant's brother, whose life sentence at Angola Prison reveals a shocking current parallel to her academic work on the history of slavery in America--are deprived of these basic freedoms every day. In her studies of Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah Plant became fascinated by Hurston's explanation for the atrocities of the international slave trade. In her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston wrote: "But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. . . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory." We look the other way when the basic human rights of marginalized and stigmatized groups are violated and desecrated, not realizing that only the practice of justice everywhere secures justice, for any of us, anywhere. An active vigilance is required of those who would be and remain free; with Of Greed and Glory, Deborah Plant reveals the many ways in which slavery continues in America today and charts our collective course toward personal sovereignty for all.

Robert H. Gudmestad provides an in-depth examination of the growth and development of the interstate slave trade during the early nineteenth century, using the business as a means to explore economic change, the culture of honor, master-slave relationships, and the justification of slavery in the antebellum South. Gudmestad demonstrates how southerners, faced with the incongruity of maintaining their paternalistic beliefs about slavery even while capitalistically exploiting their slaves, coped by disassociating themselves from the brutality and greed of the slave trade and shifting responsibility for slavery’s realities to the speculators. In tracing the trans- formation of a troublesome commerce into a southern scapegoat, this pro- vocative work proves the interstate slave trade to be vital to the making—and understanding—of the paradoxical antebellum South.

In March 1807, the British Parliament passed an Act making the trading and transportation of slaves illegal. It was many years before slavery, as it was known then, was abolished, and slavery still continues today in different ways, but it was a big step forward towards the empancipation of a people. Malorie Blackman has drawn together some of the finest of today's writers and poets to contribute to this important anthology. Their short stories and poems sit alongside first-hand accounts of slavery from freed slaves, making a fascinating and absorbing collection that remembers and commemorates one of the most brutal and long-lasting inflictions of misery that human beings have inflicted upon other human beings.

The most comprehensive guide to Norse literature, historical folk lore and more. Kvilhaug peels back the layers of the Eddas, Poems and Sagas to reveal hidden truths within Maria's background in research and archaeology is visible throughout with full illustrations, timelines and beautiful translations of passages providing the key to unlocking and deciphering the hidden wisdom within. Her exploration of modern interpretations, past parables, and related cultural mythos provides a deeper layer into the mysteries of Old Norse practices.