Slavery and the Making of America. By James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, c. 2005. Pp. 254. Paper, $10.99, ISBN 0-19-530451-9; cloth, $35.00, ISBN 0-19-517903-X.)

In a companion book to the Public Broadcasting Service series on slavery (aired in February 2005), James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton recount the history of enslaved Africans and their descendants in America. It is a story that begins in Africa with Africans capturing other Africans for sale to European slave traders. Operating from various trade posts and forts along the Atlantic coast of West Africa, agents of European slave-trading companies dispatched millions of enslaved Africans on a forced migration to a life of slavery in the Americas. Many enslaved Africans failed to survive the horrors of the Atlantic crossing, the so-called middle passage, while those who lived through it faced...