NATIONAL BESTSELLER "EVERYONE SHOULD READ AND LEARN FROM THIS LUMINOUS BOOK...Like Alex Haleys Roots, through which African American history came into national focus...Slaves in the Family has the potential for creating a perceptual shift in the American mind...The book is not only honest in its scrupulous reporting but also personal narrative at its finest." --San Francisco Chronicle "BALL IS A FIRST-RATE SCHOLAR-JOURNALIST...Hes also a good detective, tracking down the many descendants of Ball slaves from New York to California and back in the South and coaxing them, often with some difficulty, to tell their stories...Outside Faulkner, it will be hard to find a more poignant, powerful account of a white man struggling with his and his nations past." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "A MASTERPIECE? REMARKABLE? It is a work about slaves in the family. But it is also a large omnium gatherum of enchanting fireside anecdotes, secrets teased out of reluctant fragments from the remote past, the real li