Rating: 
Summary: Tells the Unreconstructed what they want to hear!
Review: Time on the Cross is seriously flawed. While the intent behind it is honest, the outcome of this project is a gold mine for Confederate apologists. Fogel and Engerman systemmatically misrepresent the nature of slavery in the Old South.Their account lacks any conception of the nuances of life in the antebellum South. Their use of sources is highly selective: examining the diary of one slaveholder, Bennett Barrows, they use selective examples to conclude that he did not whip his slaves indiscriminately. Apparently they missed the pages where dear old Mr Barrows had himself a "whipping frolick" or where he beat all of his fieldhands as punishment for losing a shovel. By the time they assert that whipping was rare (in their words, ".7 whippings per hand per year) I'm ready to gag. Consistent in this book is a systemmatic inattention to the psychological reality of the slave system. F&E don't understand subtler forms of coercion; they don't understand fear. In their economic analyses, one senses that they stacked the deck to favor the South: one hilarious map groups (slaveholding) Missouri in the North and includes the "states" of Oklahoma, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota. None of the last four entered the Union before 1865! Fogel and Engerman should have stuck to pure econ. When they decided to write history, they came to the field projecting economic assumptions onto their subjects, forgetting the very complex and layered nature of life in the South. Having reduced slaves to eager workers with a Protestant work ethic they have inadvertenly produced a book that must read very well at meetings of the daughters of the Confederacy. For a much better history of slavery, look at Kenneth Stampp's The Peculiar Institution. Herbert Gutman's Slavery and the Numbers Game is a great critique of F&E.
Rating: 
Summary: Problems with Fogle and Engerman
Review: worth 5 stars for the data alone. You might not agree with their conclusions, but the research is powerful.
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