Explores the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives during the American domestic slave trade. Historian Daina Ramey Berry shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments, including the little-known domestic cadaver trade with dead bodies being sold to medical schools. By illuminating their lives, Berry ensures that the individuals she studies are regarded as people, not merely commodities. Analyzing the depth of this monetization of human property will change the way we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, and nineteenth-century medical education"--Provided by publisher. Daina Berry is an associate professor of history and African and African disapora studies at the University of Texas at Austin.