Eugene D. Genovese examines the world that enslaved people and slaveholders made together in the antebellum South, arguing that slavery was not simply an economic system but a complex web of human relationships shaped by what he calls paternalism. This does not mean Genovese viewed slavery benignly—rather, he contends that slaveholders constructed an ideology of paternal obligation to justify their power, and that enslaved people strategically engaged with this ideology to carve out space for their own humanity and autonomy. The book's great contribution is its meticulous reconstruction of enslaved people's inner lives and cultural world. Genovese examines how Black Christianity became a vehicle for spiritual independence, with preachers and congregations developing a theology that emphasized deliverance and divine justice. He explores the significance of naming practices, family structures, food cultivation, music, and folk religion, showing how each became a site of quiet but persistent resistance to dehumanization. The analysis of work rhythms reveals how enslaved laborers imposed their own pace and standards, forcing concessions from owners who depended on their skill and cooperation. Genovese draws on plantation records, diaries, slave narratives, and folklore to build his account, producing a work distinguished by its ambition to understand slavery from inside the experience rather than from above it. A Marxist historian by training, Genovese brings questions of class and power to bear on a subject that American historians had too often treated as a regional peculiarity rather than a defining feature of national development.