White over Black

In 1968, Winthrop D. Jordan set out in encyclopedic detail the evolution of white Englishmen's and Anglo-Americans' perceptions of blacks, perceptions of difference used to justify race-based slavery, and liberty and justice for whites only. This second edition, with a new foreword by Christopher Leslie Brown, reminds us that Jordan's text is still the definitive work on the history of race in America in the colonial era. Every book published to this day on slavery and racism builds upon his work; all are judged in comparison to it; none has surpassed it.

Winthrop D. Jordan (1931-2007) taught history at the University of Mississippi. His books include Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy and White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States. Christopher Leslie Brown is professor of history at Columbia University. He is the author of Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, for which he won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Peter H. Wood is professor of history emeritus at Duke University and author of Strange New Land: African Americans, 1526-1776, among other books.