In Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom, Stanley Engerman synthesizes current scholarship and addresses questions that are critical to understanding the nature of slavery: Why did slavery arise, and how, why, where, and when did it legally end? What impact did slavery have on the enslaved? Was the impact lingering or was it reversed by the provision of freedom?<BR>Engerman begins his study by discussing slavery from a global perspective. He reminds us of the ubiquity of slavery throughout the world, challenging the stereotype that it was only the American South's "peculiar institution." Using the same broad comparative and temporal approach to discuss emancipation, he shows how emancipation in the southern states, several decades after it began in other parts of the world, both differed from and mirrored abolition around the globe.