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** spoiler alert ** An academic book that makes a very compelling case using statistical analysis about the persistent effect of slave ownership levels in the pre-civil war period on the attitudes of white southerners toward Black people. Specifically, the authors argue that data show that white people living in counties with higher rates of slave ownership pre-civil war continue to be “cooler�� toward Black people in so-called self-reported “thermometer surveys��, that they are less likely to support policies believed to favour Blacks, and less likely to vote for the contemporary Democratic Party. The authors posit that a concept they call behavioural path dependence is the reason for the stability seen in the attitudes of white southerners in these higher slave owning counties toward Black people. Behavioural path dependence is the term used to describe the passing down of ideas and behaviours over time both through institutions and formal laws and through families and social structures (eg schools and churches). In this case, a crucial turning point that launched many white southerners on this path was the post civil war crisis get by southern cotton planters who would have faced severe economic deterioration if the now freed black slaves became politically empowered, economically mobile and able to use the shortage of labour as leverage to gain higher wages. Behaviours and policies that aimed at instilling fear in Black people to prevent them from voting and to still tie them to the land were instituted as a result. Early in the book, there are interesting references to other periods of history that may have shaped negative attitudes towards other minority groups. For example, a German study looked at voting patterns in German towns during the Weimar period showed that the Nazi party (and possibly predecessor parties) had higher shares of the vote in towns that saw anti-Jewish pogroms during the period of the plague in the 14th century. A whole bunch other interesting references are found on the same page.