The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson of Roanoke, VA, 1843

Slave masters were people, too. From recent texts and films we have learned that slavery was a bad thing. Colonel Hap Thompson was simply a man about his business. His business was training other people.

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Percival Everett’s The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson of Roanoke, VA, 1843, Annotated From the Library of John C. Calhoun, is poetry within the harsh confines of a mock historical document—a guidebook for the American slave owner. The collection features lists of instructions for buying, training, and punishing, equations for calculating present and future profits, and handwritten annotations affirming the brutal contents. The Book of Training lays bare the mechanics of the peculiar institution of slavery and challenges readers to place themselves in the uncomfortable vantage point of those who have bought and enslaved human beings.