Five Thousand Years of Slavery is a book that provides an overview of slavery over the different ages of humanity. I would highly recommend this book to people who would like to learn more about our past. ( )

Vivid and stark description of slavery through the ages, avoiding glamorization and refusing to avoid unpleasant truths. Care is taken to treat slaves as people, not just victims or sad stories, and the modern information is documented as well as illustrated with actual cases. ( )

This was a well written book about a difficult subject. It is divided into chapters based on region to give the reader a general overview of how slavery has affected people worldwide. The addition of pictures and personalized accounts of individuals involved in all aspects of slavery helps us to understand how truly awful this practice is.

Reading this book should make you uncomfortable, yet that is why you should read. It is important to be educated on all forms of slavery so that the practice can be eliminated. By being an informed individual, you can contribute to antislavery causes and ensure you are supporting businesses that have fair trade agreements with their workers. ( )

Vivid and stark description of slavery through the ages, avoiding glamorization and refusing to avoid unpleasant truths. Care is taken to treat slaves as people, not just victims or sad stories, and the modern information is documented as well as illustrated with actual cases. ( )

As a high school world history teacher, I wanted to like this book. I really, REALLY wanted to like this book and I was hoping to have a new classroom resource to add to my students' recommended reading list. No so.

In the elementary school setting--perhaps in the school library or used in the classroom for anecdotal enrichment--this book could find a niche. However, this book falls short of the needs of high-school level learners. First, it breaks one of the cardinal rules of informative non-fiction writing: it lacks a bibliography. Granted, on the "Sources" page at the end of the book, the author states that, "A complete bibliography is available at our website, www.fivethousandyearsofslavery.com," but it was too little, too late. My students found the statement insufficient and unreassuring, and they resented the notion of having to electronically hunt down the source information themselves. The omission of a printed bibliography rendered this book's content anecdotal in the minds of many of my students and it led them to question the unreliable of its information.

As for content, the bulk of the discussion of slavery is devoted to the typically cover time period from the age of European exploration trough the American Civil War. The book provides scant treatment of slavery during ancient times or present-day. In face, Chapter 2, which covers slavery in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, intersperses information about the two civilizations as if the cultures co-existed simultaneously, despite real life chronology. I found that difficult to get past.

Recommended for elementary school use, but not for older grades. ( )