Volume 22, Number 15 · October 2, 1975
The True & Tragical History of 'Time on the Cross'
By Thomas L. Haskell
Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross
by Herbert G. Gutman
University of Illinois Press, 192 pp., $2.95 (paper)
"A Symposium on Time on the Cross"
edited by Gary M. Walton
Explorations in Economic History, Vol. 12 pp.
Reckoning with Slavery: Critical Essays in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery
by Paul A. David, by Herbert G. Gutman, by Richard Sutch, by Peter Temin, by Gavin Wright, with an introduction by Kenneth M. Stampp
Oxford University Press, 352 pp., $4.50 (to be published next spring) (paper)
Anyone who recalls the uncritical enthusiasm that greeted the publication of Time on the Cross a year and a half ago will be shocked by the three volumes of criticism under review. Their combined effect is devastating. A study of slavery that at first seemed exceptionally important, if contentious, now appears at least to be severely flawed and possibly not even worth further attention by serious scholars. This is hardly the fate one would have predicted for a book that the Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom called 'a remarkable achievement,' 'absolutely stunning, quite simply the most exciting and provocative book I've read in years.' Or which inspired the Columbia economist Peter Passell, in his review for The New York Times, to declare: 'If a more important book about American history has been published in the last decade, I don't know about it.' It has, he said, 'with one stroke turned around a whole field of interpretation and exposed the frailty of history done without science.'
Review, 7294 words
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