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Title: Not to be taken seriously.
Review: This book is useful mostly as an example of how not to approach history. Fogel and Engerman used data based on slaveholders' records to conclude that slaves were treated well in the old South. They counted, for example, the exact number of beatings that an average slave would experience in year and concluded that it was only a few, without considering the impact of witnessing beatings of one fellow slaves, many of whom were family members or close friends. They counted the calories consumed by slaves but ignored data like actual caloric expenditures of slaves (which rendered their intake barely sufficient) and infant mortality (very high). This book serves mainly to reinforce one's prejudices and should not be read without also looking at other works in the field.
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