‘a lucid, densely packed, and extremely intelligent analysis of slavery… indispensable’Eric Hobsbawm, The Guardian‘an inventive and perceptive book’Jack P. Greene, The American Historical Review‘a valuable contribution to the study of West Indian history… Patterson has asked new questions and elicited some new answers in his discussion of the Jamaican slave society.’Elsa Goveia, The Times Literary Supplement‘This book is a badly needed and well done study of the slave society of Jamaica… Refreshingly free of romanticism, it deals frankly with the impact of slavery upon all the members of Jamaican society.’Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, The Historian"[Orlando Patterson] is one of our great comparative and historical sociologists"Society