The Half Has Never Been Told received mixed reviews from academics. Anonymous might have had to admit that market fundamentalism doesn't always provide the best solution for every economic or social problem. No wonder the Economist abandoned its long-standing intellectual commitments in favor of sloppy old paternalism on Sept. Had the Economist actually engaged the book's arguments, the reviewer would have had to confront the scary fact that the unrestrained domination of market forces can sometimes amplify existing forms of oppression into something more horrific. Baptist wrote a response in Politico magazine in which he states,

This is not history it is advocacy.' This prompted a rare withdrawal of the article and an apology from the magazine. The review sparked widespread outrage for its statement, 'Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains. In September 2014, Baptist's work came to prominence when The Economist published a review of The Half Has Never Been Told, criticizing Baptist's thesis that growth in cotton productivity was driven primarily by increasing cruelty. Baptist is the author of many articles and books including The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism and the award-winning Creating an Old South. His areas of interest are 19th-century United States and especially the history of enslavement in America. Career īaptist is a professor of history at Cornell University. He graduated from Georgetown University and in 1997 earned his doctorate from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is the author of numerous books.īaptist was born in 1970 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but he grew up in Durham, North Carolina. Thematically, he has been interested in the history of capitalism and has also been interested in digital humanities methodologies. He is a professor of history at Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, where he specializes in the history of the 19th-century United States, particularly the South.

Baptist (born 1970) is an American academic and writer.

The half has never been told