Recensori in anteprimaJanet Willen

Recommended for ages 10 and up. Impoverished Sumerians sold their children into bondage. Slaves in Rome faced neverending drudgery and danger. In Mexico they were sacrificed to appease their god. East Africans were forced to work the salt mines of Iraq. Cotton pickers in the American South labored from dawn to dusk under slave drivers' whips. Past history? Yes ... and no. Tragically, in our time, slavery wears many faces. Beatrice Fernando had to work almost around the clock in Lebanon. James Kofi Annan's Ghanaian parents sold him because they could not feed him. Julia Gabriel was trafficked from Arizona to the cucumber fields of South Carolina. Thousands of children in developing countries work in factories and on farms at the expense of their freedom. More than 250,000 children were enslaved by military groups in 2009 according to the United Nations.

Recommended for ages 10 and up. From the early days of the antislavery movement, when political action by women was frowned upon, British and American women were tireless and uncompromising campaigners. Without their efforts, emancipation would have taken much longer. And the commitment of today's women, who fight against human trafficking and child slavery, descends directly from that of the early female activists. Speak a Word for Freedom: Women against Slavery tells the story of fourteen of these women. Meet Alice Seeley Harris, the British missionary whose graphic photographs of mutilated Congolese rubber slaves in 1904 galvanized a nation; Hadijatou Mani, the woman from Niger who successfully sued her own government in 2008 for failing to protect her from slavery, as well as Elizabeth Freeman, Elizabeth Heyrick, Ellen Craft, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Anne Kemble, Kathleen Simon, Fredericka Martin, Timea Nagy, Micheline Slattery, Sheila Roseau and Nina Smith. With photographs, source notes, and index.

Recommended for ages 11 and up. When they were too impoverished to raise their families, ancient Sumerians sold their children into bondage. Slave women in Rome faced never-ending household drudgery. The ninth-century Zanj were transported from East Africa to work the salt marshes of Iraq. Cotton pickers worked under terrible duress in the American South. Ancient history? Tragically, no. In our time, slavery wears many faces. James Kofi Annan's parents in Ghana sold him because they could not feed him. Beatrice Fernando had to work almost around the clock in Lebanon. Julia Gabriel was trafficked from Arizona to the cucumber fields of South Carolina. Five Thousand Years of Slavery provides the suspense and emotional engagement of a great novel. It is an excellent resource with its comprehensive historical narrative, firsthand accounts, maps, archival photos, paintings and posters, an index, and suggestions for further reading. Much more than a reference work, it is a brilliant exploration of the worst - and the best - in human society.