This work on runaway slaves in the American South pre-Civil War posits that slave resistance was much more prevalent and widespread than has been attributed, and, specifically, that slaves attempted to run away from their masters whenever they could. they provide an amazing wealth of detail on the backgrounds and experiences of bondsmen and bondswomen who were so discontented with slavery, or at least with their particular experience of it, that they simply ran away./ John Shelton Read, the William Rand Kenan, Jr, Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the TLS, 30/04/99