San Antonio College Library

Life on a Mississippi plantation before the Civil War.

Approaching their topic through the lenses of art history and social history, the authors explore a largely unexamined and provocative genre of American art: plantation paintings. The 83 color plates, 19 black-and-white illustrations, and six essays present both the images and a background for understanding them in the context of slavery and race relations in the United States.

In these 120 resonant full-color photographs, David King Gleason fully captures the aura of Louisiana's plantation homes -- some beautiful in the morning light, some shaded by trees and hanging moss, some crumbling in decay and neglect. Taking each house on its own terms, Gleason's photographs present the buildings and their environs sharply and without deception. Accompanying the photographs are captions that give a brief architectural evaluation...

"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;...

The stunning, never-before-told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon, "Fordlandia" depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch.

The tragedies and emotional repercussions of slavery in the antebellum South are seen through the eyes of slave owner Manon Gaudet, who marries the owner of a sugar plantation, only to see her own slave, Sarah, become her husband's mistress.

When a plantation proprietor and former slave--now possessing slaves of his own--dies, his household falls apart in the wake of a slave rebellion and corrupt underpaid patrollers who enable free black people to be sold into slavery.