This book is the definitive popular history of American slavery. It's scholarly credentials are impeccable, as are it's marxist tendencies. The analysThis book is the definitive popular history of American slavery. It's scholarly credentials are impeccable, as are it's marxist tendencies. The analysis of the southern Paternalism is what makes this book worth reading. Good history enlarges so your understanding of things beyond the primary subject matter. Genovese makes you see the South as a metaphor for the relations of power as they exist in the society as a whole. ...more
Read the last chapter. Van Doren sees a world run by artificial intelligence, ala Blade Runner or the Matrix. His argument as he presents it feels rigRead the last chapter. Van Doren sees a world run by artificial intelligence, ala Blade Runner or the Matrix. His argument as he presents it feels right to me, even if it's painted with the same brush as the Terminator trilogy. Then again, who's to say the future cyborgs didn't send James Cameron back in time to make Terminator? By the way, Dr. Nick Bostrom of the Future of Humanity Institute at OXFORD, believes there is a 20 percent chance current human beings are computerized simulations created by future human beings.