A landmark…very powerful and informative.  Once I started to read it I was hooked.  Dattel combines a firm grasp of finance and its controlling impact on the pattern of rural life in cotton-growing regions with human sympathy for both field hands and planters.” William H. McNeill, history professor emeritus University of Chicago; author, Plagues and Peoples, The Rise of the West: A History of Human Community, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History; regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.