The Sweetness of Life: Southern Planters at Home

This book examines the home and leisure life of planters in the antebellum American South. Based on a lifetime of research by the late Eugene Genovese (1930-2012), with an introduction and epilogue by Douglas Ambrose, The Sweetness of Life presents a penetrating study of slaveholders and their families in both intimate and domestic settings: at home; attending the theatre; going on vacations to spas and springs; throwing parties; hunting; gambling; drinking and entertaining guests, completing a comprehensive portrait of the slaveholders and the world that they built with slaves. Genovese subtly but powerfully demonstrates how much politics, economics, and religion shaped, informed, and made possible these leisure activities. A fascinating investigation of a little-studied aspect of planter life, The Sweetness of Life broadens our understanding of the world that the slaveholders and their slaves made; a tragic world of both 'sweetness' and slavery.

Author: Eugene D. Genovese
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 10/05/2017
Pages: 308
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 9.24h x 6.39w x 0.73d
ISBN13: 9781316502891
ISBN10: 1316502899
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States | 19th Century
- History | United States | State & Local | South (AL,AR,FL,GA,KY,LA,MS,
- History | Social History