Major Butler's Legacy: Five Generations of a Slaveholding Family

Malcolm Bell. University of Georgia Press, $22.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8203-1177-7

Major Pierce Butler left the British army in 1771, when he married into South Carolina gentry. He established a family fortune based on the plantation labor of nearly 600 slaves. ``This academic study of Butler, his plantations and the lives of his descendants through the early 1900s provides instructive glimpses of the Southern slave economy and its dissolution after the Civil War,'' said PW . Illustrated. (Oct.)

Featured Nonfiction Reviews

Craig Unger

Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign really did make a deal with Iran to delay the release of 52 American hostages until after the election, according to this labyrinthine Continue reading »

Edmund White

With his trademark irreverence, White (The Humble Lover) celebrates more than six decades of sex in a candid memoir that doubles as an indispensable work of queer history. A Continue reading »

Jason de León

Smugglers who help Central Americans traverse Mexico and cross into the U.S. are not the “slick haired... kingpins” portrayed in popular media but are usually themselves poor Continue reading »

Dorian Lynskey

This sweeping cultural history from journalist Lynskey (The Ministry of Truth) chronicles how films, novels, and other media have imagined the apocalypse from ancient times Continue reading »