“Much like the work of Michelle Alexander and Douglas Blackmon, Plant’s narrative traces connections among slavery, the Jim Crow regime and modern mass incarceration.” - Los Angeles Times A ground-breaking, personal exploration of America’s obsession with continuing human bondage from the editor of the New York Times– bestselling Barracoon . Freedom and equality are the watchwords of American democracy. But like justice, freedom and equality are meaningless when there is no corresponding practical application of the ideals they represent. Physical, bodily liberty is fundamental to every American’s personal sovereignty. And yet, millions of Americans—including author Deborah Plant’s brother, whose life sentence at Angola Prison reveals a shocking current parallel to her academic work on the history of slavery in America—are deprived of these basic freedoms every day. In her studies of Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah Plant became fascinated by Hurston’s explanation for the atrocities of the international slave trade. In her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road , Hurston wrote: “But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. . . . It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory.” We look the other way when the basic human rights of marginalized and stigmatized groups are violated and desecrated, not realizing that only the practice of justice everywhere secures justice, for any of us, anywhere. An active vigilance is required of those who would be and remain free; with Of Greed and Glory , Deborah Plant reveals the many ways in which slavery continues in America today and charts our collective course toward personal sovereignty for all. Plant’s urgent work dissects the American systems that perpetuate bondage: The 13th Amendment Loophole: An unflinching look at the constitutional clause that allows slavery to persist as punishment for a crime, fueling the modern prison-industrial complex. - From Plantation to Penitentiary: A harrowing history of Louisiana’s Angola prison, tracing its origins as a slave plantation to its current status as America’s largest maximum-security prison. - Mass Incarceration as Memoir: The author’s personal journey as she confronts the system holding her own brother in a life sentence, connecting historical research to present-day tragedy. - The Convict Leasing System: An essential investigation into the post-Reconstruction practice that re-enslaved Black Americans and laid the groundwork for today's injustices. - Inspired by Zora Neale Hurston: A deep dive into Hurston’s concept of "greed and glory" as the engine behind centuries of human bondage and exploitation. “Much like the work of Michelle Alexander and Douglas Blackmon, Plant’s narrative traces connections among slavery, the Jim Crow regime and modern mass incarceration.” - Los Angeles Times A ground-breaking, personal exploration of America’s obsession with continuing human bondage. (January 2024 must read.) - Next Big Ideas Book Club A top Black author to read in 2024 - Publishers Weekly "This is an emotional and passionate book, raw in its grief and anger, but also imbued with hope for redemption. Based on objective historical fact and subjective experience, Of Greed and Glory has the power of a sermon and the urgency of a manifesto." - Book Page A cogent study of how racialized abuse of justice is a feature—not a bug—of American life. A compelling argument against the systemic abuse of justice as a weapon of oppression. - Kirkus Reviews “This is an emotional and passionate book, raw in its grief and anger, but also imbued with hope for redemption. Based on objective his­torical fact and subjective experience, Of Greed and Glory has the power of a sermon and the urgency of a manifesto.” - Deborah Mason, BookPage "As indispensable to understanding the Americas as Edward E. Baptist’s  The Half Has Never Been Told.   Of Greed and Glory powerfully demonstrates that though we as Black Americans are far from faultless in some of our most egregious behavior on the mean plantations and streets of antebellum and modern America, we nonetheless have had to grow our dignity beneath the pitiless boot of those who looked into the tiny faces of our infants and saw only dollar signs. Powerful and necessary." - Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Award winning author of The Color Purple and Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart “If you want to understand the current issues surrounding race, social justice, and inequality, you have to read Deborah Plant’s book, Of Greed and Glory . Deborah understands that the issues surrounding race, unfolding before us now in America, are deeply rooted in the legacy of the African American past. She writes eloquently and beautifully about that past. Of Greed and Glory is a must-read book for socially conscious citizens.” - Clyde W. Ford, Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award in African