Listen free for 30 days
-
The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Categories: History, Americas
People who bought this also bought...
-
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- As Told to Alex Haley
- By: Malcolm X, Alex Haley
- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
-
-
Fantastic.
- By Amazon Customer on 21-09-20
-
American Slavery: History in an Hour
- By: Kat Smutz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 1 hr and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
>Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. From the first slaves arriving in Jamestown in 1619, the cotton fields in the Southern States, and shipbuilding in New England, to the slaves who laid down their lives in war so that Americans could be free, American Slavery in an Hour covers the breadth of the subject without sacrificing important historical and cultural details. An important and dark time in Black - and American - history, the era of American slavery is explored in American Slavery in an Hour, which will explain the key facts and give you a clear overview of this much discussed period of history, as well as its legacy.
-
-
Effective and Informative
- By lesley on 06-02-14
-
The Dead Are Arising
- The Life of Malcolm X
- By: Les Payne, Tamara Payne
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly 30-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X - including siblings, classmates, friends, cellmates, FBI moles and cops and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become hundreds of hours of interviews into a portrait that would separate fact from fiction.
-
-
Timely and informative.
- By Amazon Customer on 19-12-20
-
Slavery's Capitalism
- A New History of American Economic Development
- By: Sven Beckert - editor, Seth Rockman - editor
- Narrated by: William Hughes, Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the 19th century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.
-
Maoism
- A Global History
- By: Julia Lovell
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 21 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao’s revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People’s Republic and the legitimacy of its Communist government. With disagreements and conflicts between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing.
-
-
Spellbinding
- By Adrian J. Smith on 26-11-19
-
America’s Long Struggle Against Slavery
- By: Richard Bell, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Professor Richard Bell
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What do you really know about the fight against slavery in America? We’re all familiar with the Underground Railroad and the Emancipation Proclamation, but the fight against slavery was not some sudden movement that sprang up in the middle of the 19th century. Resistance from the enslaved started on the western coast of Africa in the 15th century and continued as the institution of slavery was codified in America, culminating with the War between the States.
-
-
Sensational!
- By A. Rich on 08-08-20
-
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- As Told to Alex Haley
- By: Malcolm X, Alex Haley
- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
-
-
Fantastic.
- By Amazon Customer on 21-09-20
-
American Slavery: History in an Hour
- By: Kat Smutz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 1 hr and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
>Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. From the first slaves arriving in Jamestown in 1619, the cotton fields in the Southern States, and shipbuilding in New England, to the slaves who laid down their lives in war so that Americans could be free, American Slavery in an Hour covers the breadth of the subject without sacrificing important historical and cultural details. An important and dark time in Black - and American - history, the era of American slavery is explored in American Slavery in an Hour, which will explain the key facts and give you a clear overview of this much discussed period of history, as well as its legacy.
-
-
Effective and Informative
- By lesley on 06-02-14
-
The Dead Are Arising
- The Life of Malcolm X
- By: Les Payne, Tamara Payne
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly 30-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X - including siblings, classmates, friends, cellmates, FBI moles and cops and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become hundreds of hours of interviews into a portrait that would separate fact from fiction.
-
-
Timely and informative.
- By Amazon Customer on 19-12-20
-
Slavery's Capitalism
- A New History of American Economic Development
- By: Sven Beckert - editor, Seth Rockman - editor
- Narrated by: William Hughes, Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the 19th century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.
-
Maoism
- A Global History
- By: Julia Lovell
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 21 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. Since the 1980s, China seems to have abandoned the utopian turmoil of Mao’s revolution in favour of authoritarian capitalism. But Mao and his ideas remain central to the People’s Republic and the legitimacy of its Communist government. With disagreements and conflicts between China and the West on the rise, the need to understand the political legacy of Mao is urgent and growing.
-
-
Spellbinding
- By Adrian J. Smith on 26-11-19
-
America’s Long Struggle Against Slavery
- By: Richard Bell, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Professor Richard Bell
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What do you really know about the fight against slavery in America? We’re all familiar with the Underground Railroad and the Emancipation Proclamation, but the fight against slavery was not some sudden movement that sprang up in the middle of the 19th century. Resistance from the enslaved started on the western coast of Africa in the 15th century and continued as the institution of slavery was codified in America, culminating with the War between the States.
-
-
Sensational!
- By A. Rich on 08-08-20
-
Slavery by Another Name
- The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
- By: Douglas A. Blackmon
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an Age of Neoslavery that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.
-
-
1945 End of slavery in USA
- By Pam Jolliffe on 19-08-20
-
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
- By: Walter Rodney, Angela Davis - foreword
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the West and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the repercussions of European colonialism in Africa remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.
-
-
Essential Reading (Listening) by ALL Human Beings
- By Watch John Pilger on johnpilger dot com on 11-01-20
-
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
- Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
- By: Angela Y. Davis
- Narrated by: Angela Davis, Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of Black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles - from the Black freedom movement to the South African antiapartheid movement.
-
-
A pioneer still ahead of the times
- By Cynthia Rodríguez on 02-04-19
-
Black and British
- A Forgotten History
- By: David Olusoga
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 24 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Olusoga's Black and British is a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello.
-
-
Fantastically detailed Exceptionally informative
- By lionel on 30-04-17
-
Capital and Ideology
- By: Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer - translator
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 48 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Piketty’s best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.
-
-
worth the effort
- By Rowan on 08-07-20
-
Bomber Command
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With an introduction read by Max Hastings. Bomber Command's offensive against the cities of Germany was one of the epic campaigns of the Second World War. More than 56,000 British and Commonwealth aircrew and 600,000 Germans died in the course of the RAF's attempt to win the war by bombing. The struggle began in 1939 with a few score primitive Whitleys, Hampdens and Wellingtons, and ended six years later with 1,600 Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes razing whole cities in a single night.
-
-
First of a long series of truly exceptional books
- By petitbilbo on 25-11-15
-
Malcolm X
- A Life of Reinvention
- By: Manning Marable
- Narrated by: G. Valmont Thomas
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Of the great figure in 20th-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age 39. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man.
-
-
Critical Diagnosis of Malcom X
- By Tino Bvunzawabaya on 20-06-20
-
The Other Slavery
- The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
- By: Andrés Reséndez
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the "mouth of hell" of 18th-century silver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos.
-
The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World
- By: Robert Garland, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Robert Garland
- Length: 24 hrs and 28 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Look beyond the abstract dates and figures, kings and queens, and battles and wars that make up so many historical accounts. Over the course of 48 richly detailed lectures, Professor Garland covers the breadth and depth of human history from the perspective of the so-called ordinary people, from its earliest beginnings through the Middle Ages.
-
-
Nearest thing to time travel available
- By JL on 09-10-13
-
The Boundless Sea
- A Human History of the Oceans
- By: David Abulafia
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 41 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For most of human history, the seas and oceans have been the main means of long-distance trade and communication between peoples - for the spread of ideas and religion as well as commerce. This book traces the history of human movement and interaction around and across the world's greatest bodies of water, charting our relationship with the oceans from the time of the first voyagers.
-
-
This has
- By Sean on 11-01-20
-
Debt - Updated and Expanded
- The First 5,000 Years
- By: David Graeber
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
-
-
Looking for economic and social clarity?
- By John Hodgson on 29-05-17
-
Caste
- The Lies That Divide Us
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beyond race or class, our lives are defined by a powerful, unspoken system of divisions. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson gives an astounding portrait of this hidden phenomenon. Linking America, India and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson reveals how our world has been shaped by caste - and how its rigid, arbitrary hierarchies still divide us today. With clear-sighted rigour, Wilkerson unearths the eight pillars that connect caste systems across civilisations and demonstrates how our own era of intensifying conflict and upheaval has arisen as a consequence of caste.
-
-
A must read.
- By Soulful j on 05-10-20
Summary
In The Half Has Never Been Told, historian Edward E. Baptist reveals the alarming extent to which slavery shaped our country politically, morally, and most of all, economically. Until the Civil War, our chief form of innovation was slavery. Through forced migration and torture, slave owners extracted continual increases in efficiency from their slaves, giving the country a virtual monopoly on the production of cotton, a key raw material of the Industrial Revolution.
As Baptist argues, this frenzy of speculation and economic expansion transformed the United States into a modern capitalist nation. Based on thousands of slave narratives and plantation records, The Half Has Never Been Told offers not only a radical revision of the history of slavery but a disturbing new understanding of the origins of American power that compels listeners to reckon with the violence and subjugation at the root of American supremacy.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Half Has Never Been Told
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- A. Rich
- 20-07-20
Fantastic!
This is one of the best books I have ever read about slavery. It gives the reader a very holistic picture of slavery in the U.S. and is suberbly interspersed with narratives of real people's experiences. Very highly recommended!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Freddie Anyaegbunam
- 19-02-19
Highly recommended!
Brilliant history of the way things happened. I am glad that now that he has chosen to highlight the history from a more balance point of view incorporating the victims' true impact.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Robert Fullerton
- 04-01-15
The most definitive history of American slavery;
Where does The Half Has Never Been Told rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
The essential companion to McPherson's Battle Cry Of Freedom in understanding the Civil War.
Who was your favorite character and why?
President Lincoln fought the war that destroyed slavery and advanced civilization based on personal merit, democratic institutions which became the human model of freedom and self-government for future ages in World History.
Have you listened to any of Ron Butler’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The shocking rape of black men by western slavers in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas for the sake of plantation production and control. The Caribbean slave rebellion in Haiti, which defeated both French and British soldiers, set up a concurrence of fear among white slavers and even common white farmers.
Any additional comments?
No current living American citizen, nor immigrant can understand the American Story from 1790's to today, without investigating the divergent North and South; social, political and economic lifestyle prior to the commencement of the Civil War, The new western slavers were growing America's chief export commodity, cotton. These new slavers, located in Texas, Louisiana Mississippi and Arkansas annually exported 13, or more, millions of cotton bales to mills in Great Britain and France. Even during hostilities, starved for cash, western slavers shipped cotton North, to mills in New England.
41 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- M. Hoffman
- 08-03-15
Masterful combo of economics, history, and prose
This is a remarkable book!! Baptist weaves individual slaves' stories into an exposition of the economics driving slavery's expansion. He makes a powerful argument that slavery was pivotal in the development of US and world capital, and was actually accelerating at the time of the Civil war.
The us of accounts by specific enslaved people helps to illustrate larger structural changes in slavery's development but helps you understand the toll these played on people's lives. It also helps to understand various cultural developments and slavery,s lasting legacy.
I wish I had read this in college! It would have made the civil war make much more sense.
36 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- William
- 29-09-15
A Book that Must Be Read
Let me begin by saying that I am a white, registered Republican, who has read a good deal of about the civil war era. I certainly had no clear understanding at all about the system of slavery in America until I listened to this book. Yes, the author has a position, but is it possible to write dispassionately about slavery? The book is thoroughly researched, and lucidly clear. You will begin to understand American slavery after you listen to this book. Anyone with an interest in the era really has to listen to this book. In addition, the narration is simply superb.
44 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- D. Littman
- 01-10-14
outstanding, beautiful work of history
What made the experience of listening to The Half Has Never Been Told the most enjoyable?
This book is a new interpretation of the U.S. antebellum period that powerfully combines the reality of slavery, the economics of the internal slave trade, international trade & the industrial revolution (first in the UK and later in New England), financial innovation & speculation, and banking. Baptist is able show how absolutely central slavery was to the American economy in the 19th century, north and south.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The sections that described how southern cotton planters & their overseers actually industrialized manual cotton cultivation to achieve a tripling and quadupling productivity in the field.
Any additional comments?
The narrator is outstanding, he does well with great written material.
26 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Eric T.
- 10-10-15
Truly a one-of-a-kind book
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes.
Any additional comments?
This book could've been a dry, recitation of statistics and facts, and because of the subject matter and conclusions drawn, it would've been a great book. But The Half Has Never Been Told is so much more than that. By using a multi-narrative format, the author pulls in anyone with even a casual interest in history and how it affects and informs their present by making it personal, while still including the facts, figures, statistics and holistic view of events necessary to drive home the points made.
I knew that there was a lot I didn't know about slavery, but this book does a good job of showing just how much is missing from the records books, and delves unabashedly into the taboo concept that Black peoples' wealth was stolen from them in order for America to survive - somehow a controversial statement, even in 2015.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who has eyes and knows how to read. I recommend the Audiobook to everyone else.
16 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Meliannos
- 20-03-15
The history we were never taught
This book should have been written 150 years ago and taught in schools instead of the gloss on slavery still being studied in American classrooms. It is the story of slavery as the engine of the great American economy, the story of profit as generated by systematized kidnapping, torture, murder, and oppression. It is a compelling combination of personal narratives, economic analysis, and political development. And it's true: what I thought I knew about the Civil War and its causes was only half of the telling.
37 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- The Alchemist
- 07-01-15
Must Read
This should be required reading in every high school in America. It is an exceptional historical and economic treatise. Wow
20 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Steve Winnett
- 05-12-14
Slavery's Role in Creating American Prosperity
Would you listen to The Half Has Never Been Told again? Why?
Yes. In fact while both reading and listening to this challenging book, I continually went back several chapters to re-read and/or re-listen to it, so startling were the facts presented and the way in which they were presented.
Who was your favorite character and why?
This is a history book; the question is irrelevant.
What does Ron Butler bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He didn't do a great job with the accents of people whose speeches he was reading, but I give him a pass on this because the story was so absorbing that I did not care.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
Please don't try to trivialize this serious book with such a silly question. If a film were ever made faithfully showing the horrible incidents of violence, rape and family destruction visited upon the slave population of early 19th century America by slave owners and traders as depicted in this book, it would be a nightmare vision which few could stomach and fewer could forget.
Any additional comments?
I was very disappointed that the New York Times did not see fit to include this book in its list of the 100 best books of 2014. It should have been on the 10 best books of 2014 list, but it wasn't there either of course. I love the United States, what it stands for, and its history. Mr. Baptist tells the underside of the story of the growth of American prosperity and economic power in the first half of the nineteenth century, which he shows to be the result of massively increased productivity in the growing and picking of cotton to feed the new mills of the Industrial Revolution through the use of the "whipping machine" of slavery and Congessional tolerance for new slave states and for interstate slave trading. He tells you a story using modern economic language and statistical analysis, for example that securitization of debt underlaid aspects of the slave trade just as it did the subprime mortgage bubble. The author combines this factual analysis with an imaginative structure and passion born of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man". If you love reading American history as much as I do, this is a book you absolutely must add to your list. It tells a story that really needs to be told, and really needs to be widely read and openly discussed.
41 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Amazon04
- 08-06-15
Excellent!!!
This is a well researched, well written book. I learned more about slavery than any prior educational experience. The day to day life under the terror of slavery is heartbreaking. I grew up in the South and slavery was portrayed in such a way as to seem kindly. Time and again as a child I heard, "why they were like family." Really? Did you sell Granny down the river?
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Gary Bailey
- 10-12-14
WoW!!! Eye Opening!
This book was well documented and communicated to the true story of wealth building and development of the United States. For those out there that really want to know the true about the atrocities committed by some Americans to create wealth at all cost, this is something you want to read. If you don’t want to know the whole truth about the initial reason for the success of America, then you might not want hear or read this book. The truth hurts…
14 people found this helpful