So I will say that I think I didn't like this more because of the time pressures under which I had to read it, but I often found it hard to follow and in some ways it must have really been fundamental to the field because I wasn't entirely sure what about it was new? There were definitely parts that were important, and I think Smallwood's framework of tracing this shift from person to commodity to slave is important but to me it just sort of jumbled together a lot and I wasn't sure exactly what she was getting at at different points. Again, I think more of that has to do with the way that I experienced this book than the book itself, but that's where it left me at the end. I would like to go back some day and reread it with a bit more care, it just wasn't a possibility at this time.