In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery.

In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery. By David Brion Davis. (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2001. Pp. viii, 392. $35.00, ISBN 0-300-08814-0.)

Fifteen years after the publication of a previous collection of essays, From Homicide to Slavery: Studies in American Culture (New York, 1986), David Brion Davis here reprints twenty-six recent articles (plus a lengthy introduction) that chart the evolution of his thought regarding the dilemma of unfree labor. This, of course, is a topic that Davis has wrestled with for nearly four decades, since the publication of his dissertation as The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966). But in 1988, at the age of sixty-one, Davis formally converted to Judaism. Consequently, be is now increasingly inclined to regard religion and spirituality as the moral foundation from which antislavery thought sprang. Even more than in his earlier collection, many of these essays are not merely united by the topic of slavery but tied together by the thread of religious belief. As a result, they are organized thematically and do not always appear chronologically.

As Davis admits, the decision to abandon his self-definition as an "agnostic," a tradition in which he was raised, motivated him to produce some of the essays in this volume (p. 2). His irritation with the Nation of Islam's shoddy, anti-Semitic account of alleged Jewish involvement with the Atlantic slave trade, for example, led to one of his more curious articles. To the extent that no amount of rational argument can persuade people who probably already know that their thesis is built upon lies and mangled data, together with the likelihood that subscribers to The New York Review of Books--where Davis's review was originally published--were certainly not much inclined to believe such nonsense in the first place, Davis's dismantling of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume One (Chicago, Ill., 1991) was perhaps more cathartic than necessary. His thoughtful discussion of the long partnership between Jewish activists and black civil rights workers, however, effectively demonstrates that this old alliance has come too far to be "ready for last rites" (p. 75). Long before Jewish radicals in the labor movement championed racial equality both in and outside of the workplace, activists like the Reverend Absalom Jones compared the suffering of the ancient Israelites with the misery endured by Africans in North America. Scholars have long understood the symbolic attraction that the story of the Exodus held for nineteenth-century bondpersons, but Davis observes that David, Zipporah (the black Cushite wife of Moses), and even the Queen of Sheba were repeatedly mentioned in sermons and hymns well into the modern civil rights era.

Most of the pieces included here are review essays and evaluate several books on roughly the same subject by different authors. Notable exceptions to this are the pieces on C. Vann Woodward and Eugene D. Genovese, essays that should be carefully read by every graduate student who wishes to understand southern historiography. Despite their occasional differences of opinion, Davis regards both Woodward and Genovese as good friends, and the gracious tone of these pieces reminds us that rigorous academic debate need not become a contact sport. Even so, Davis notes that Woodward could be "uncharacteristically bitter" when speaking of northern hypocrisy regarding race and poverty before a southern audience (p. 101). Curiously, Davis hints that some of this anger may have been due to Woodward's being "mugged on a New Haven street," and, if true, one wonders if having his pocket picked while in Paris would have transformed Woodward into a francophobe (p. 101). In the same way, although Davis finds much to applaud in Genovese's recent scholarship, he suggests that one would not know from Genovese's latest writings that the southern rural principles of John Taylor of Caroline and John Randolph of Roanoke have little in common with the modern conservatism of Phil Gramm, Jerry Falwell, and Ollie North. Not surprisingly, in response to Genovese's claim that he now agrees with Pat Robertson on some issues, Davis notes that "Robertson's belief in theories of a world conspiracy of Jewish bankers seems to have escaped [Genovese]" (p. 119).

Although some of the essays have been revised and updated, the volume fails to achieve a seamless monographic quality that might earn it a place in the classroom. Taken as a whole, however, the pieces are elegantly written, sparkle with insight, and provide a captivating look into the intellectual development of a seasoned and influential scholar.

DOUGLAS R. EGERTON

Le Moyne College