E. Benjamin Skinner

I would have given the book six stars had that many been available. Skinner examines the modern day slave trade in Eastern Europe, Haiti and India. Posing as a 'buyer' he found that he could purchase a girl for the price of a used car in Romania. In India millions work as slaves to pay off a debt taken out by a grandfather. Because of interest charged it is never paid off in spite of several generations trying. Sometimes the original loan was barely $1.00.

This is the most depressing book that EVERYONE should read.… (meer)

Frankly, I had no idea how widespread the crimes of human trafficking and slavery were across the world, before I read this book. Living in the Netherlands, I was surprised to find out that many slaves even live and work for no pay in my own country. Benjamin Skinner gives these slaves a human face and describes their suffering in heart-wrenching detail. Especially the accounts of Haitian and Eastern European slavery impressed me. Skinner also provides a great portrait of the people fighting this crime, most notably John Miller of the US State Department.… (meer)

I was looking for an 'introduction' to the problem of modern day slave trading/human trafficking, and this book served that role perfectly. I'm not an expert now, but I'm certainly moved to Do Something about it (in the form of donating to Free the Slaves, pretty much the only NGO Skinner 'endorses' or consistently praises in this book). Certainly not for the faint of heart, nor for those just looking for a comfortable treatise on world affairs. Hopefully you would know just what you were getting in to when reading such a book, and this one delivers as advertised. Grim, with scant hope, and outrage-inducing. If that's what you're looking for-here it is. (Note for those overly sensitive to political or religious biases: you'll find ample criticism in this one, of the past four or five American presidents, of Republicans, and of evangelical Christians like myself. If that's what offends you most about this book, your soul has obviously died.)… (meer)