While investigating her genealogy, the author, Andrea Stuart, learns she is the descendent of both a slave owner and a slave. She gets all the way back to the first British settlers of Barbados in the Sixteenth Century, finding a great, great (probably a dozen greats) grandfather who left Britain in search of bounty and who manages to scratche out just enough to start a lineage of sugar plantation owners. It’s an interesting idea for a book, because Stuart has enough information to fill in the gaps for a dozen generations. She covers politics, slavery, agriculture, and adventure. Unfortunately, it reads like a long Master’s thesis. A lot of research, but not that much fun to read.