Gene Dattel’s command of the details of American economic and social life is impressive in this sweeping study of the relationship between cotton and its human legacy in the treatment of African Americans. The book is full of sage judgments and fresh insights, eminently fair and unflinching in its critical assessments. He shows the power of finance and the search for profit in shaping American attitudes from the Constitutional Convention to contemporary issues of cotton’s decline and the search for social justice for the people who worked the fields of this global crop. Dattel skillfully portrays the spaces of cotton’s kingdom, from the PRESS/EVENTS fields to the board rooms of New York City’s financial companies, and offers compelling evidence of the materialism that drove American life around cotton, often compromising the better angels of our nature.