The Empire of Necessity

Groundbreaking analysis and gripping storytelling from one of today's most original and highly acclaimed historians. 'The Empire of Necessity is scholarship at its best. Greg Grandin's deft penetration into the marrow of the slave industry is compelling, brilliant, and necessary.' -- Toni Morrison 'In this multifaceted masterpiece, Greg Grandin excavates the relentlessly fascinating history of a slave revolt to mine the enduring dilemmas of politics and identity in a New World where the Age of Freedom was also the Age of Slavery. This is that rare book in which the drama of the action and the drama of ideas are equally measured, a work of history and of literary reflection that is as urgent as it is timely.' -- Philip Gourevitch, co-author of the The Ballad of Abu Ghraib 'Greg Grandin has done it again. Starting with a single dramatic encounter in the South Pacific he has shown us an entire world: of multiple continents, terrible bondage and the dream of freedom. This is also a story of how one episode changed the lives of a sea captain and a great writer from the other end of the earth.

Prize history

• Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

  2014

  Shortlist