• New scholarship on ancestral Africa and Africa during the time of the slave trade, including internal trade across land and river systems and the role of Africans themselves in the Atlantic slave trade.

• Attention to the complexity of North American slave culture during the colonial period, treating not only the British Colonies, but also slave life in the Spanish, Dutch, and French colonies.

• Increased coverage of women and women's history. • Consideration of the emergence of grassroots social movements in local communities across the U.S. in the mid-twentieth century.

• The important role of art and culture as a reflection of the events and ideas of their time periods, including discussion of individual writers, musicians, and artists. Images of representative works of art are woven into the text.