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From the economic motivations driving the trade to the efforts of abolitionists, this book reveals the birth of African American culture amidst a backdrop of horror and despair. Drawing on thirty years of research in maritime archives, court records, diaries, and firsthand accounts, The Slave Ship is riveting and sobering in its revelations, reconstructing in chilling detail a world nearly lost to history: the \"floating dungeons\" at the forefront of the birth of African American culture. 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