This book focuses on how Enlightenment ideas shaped plantation management and slave work routines.

Introduction; 1. Clock work: time, quantification, amelioration, and the Enlightenment; 2. Sunup to sundown: agricultural diversity and seasonal patterns of work; 3. Lockstep and line: gang work and the division of labor; 4. Negotiating sickness: health, work, and seasonality; 5. Labor and industry: skilled and unskilled work; 6. Working lives: occupations and families in the slave community; Conclusion.

Justin Roberts is an Assistant Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he specializes in the study of slavery and the Atlantic World. He is the recipient of multiple fellowships, including awards from the Huntington Library, John D. Rockefeller Library, John Carter Brown Library, Virginia Historical Society, Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. Professor Roberts has published articles on slavery in the William and Mary Quarterly, Slavery and Abolition, and Historical Geography. He received his Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University.