Life is the first book to probe the secret history of slave insurance and life insurance.
After the slave trade to the US was outlawed in 1808, Africans were smuggled into the country (a tricky process), they were bred (which depended on the human life cycle), and they were rented (so the people who treated them as property could make as much money as possible). People who rented slaves insured them, so that these valuable assets would not be destroyed while in someone else's possession.
Legally slaves were property. But, no other form of property could enhance its value through the skills it acquired. Life explores the history of insuring human beings from enslaved persons treated as cargo on Transatlantic vessels, to enslaved workers in America’s most dangerous and most lucrative industries. Life also shows how some of the richest financial firms acquired these policies in the 20th century and continue to profit from them today.
Tentative publication date: December 2026.