Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge.

The historiography of slavery seems to oscillate between two poles. One tradition, perhaps still best exemplified by Eugene Genovese's magisterial Roll, Jordan, Roll (1974), relies on the accretion of evidence scattered across time and place to draw the broadest possible conclusions about the peculiar institution. A countertradition, much in vogue now, looks for answers to "large questions in small places," in Charles Joyner's phrase. The former approach invariably is challenged by particular cases that refute its generalizations. Yet the latter tendency, of which Charles Dew's new book is an excellent recent example, risks taking particularity so far that generalization ...