Blassingame, John W., The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, Oxford University Press, 1979.

This historical and cultural study focuses particularly on the lives of plantation slaves in the South, detailing their daily lives and the constraints, impositions, and harsh realities they had to overcome in order to create a community.

Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Slave's Narrative, Oxford University Press, 1985.

This selection of essays, responses, and critical reviews analyzes and discusses the genre of slave narratives.

Foster, Frances Smith, Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-Bellum Slave Narratives, 2d ed., University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

This classic study of slave narratives analyzes the social, political, and literary aspects of this particularly African-American genre.

Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Vintage Books, 1976.

This thorough account of the institution of slavery in the United States covers economics, psychology, politics...