FIRST EDITION OF TIME ON THE CROSS, SIGNED AND DATED BY NOBEL LAUREATE ROBERT FOGEL IN BOTH VOLUMES

FOGEL, Robert William and ENGERMAN, Stanley L. Time on the Cross. The Economics of American Negro Slavery. WITH: Time on the Cross. Evidence and Methods. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, (1974). Two volumes. Octavo, original brown cloth, original dust jackets. $1100.

First edition of one of the most controversial works of scholarship of the past 50 years, signed on the title page of each volume by Nobel Prize-winning economist Fogel along with his date of "3/14/13"—barely three months before his death.

In Time on the Cross Fogel and Engerman used sophisticated economic models to argue that in 19th-century America, Southern slave labor was more economically productive than Northern free labor. On publication economist Peter Passell praised their work, noting: "If a more important book about American history has been published in the last decade, I don't know about it. Time on the Cross is at once a jarring attack on the methods and conclusions of traditional scholarship and a lucid, highly readable analysis of the special American problem—black slavery… They force us to confront contemporary social failings instead of pushing them into the past" (New York Times). After years of controversy— some argued the work endorsed slavery— Fogel published Without Consent or Contract in 1993, where he argued that slavery died out because it was morally backward. That same year he received the Nobel Prize in Economics (along with Douglass Hall) for developing "'new economic history,' or cliometrics, i.e. research that combines economic theory, quantitative methods, hypothesis testing, counterfactual alternatives and traditional techniques of economic history, to explain economic growth and decline" (Nobel Committee). "First Edition" stated on copyright pages. Illustrated with numerous charts, graphs and figures. Blockson 10134.

"Evident and Methods" dust jacket price-clipped. In fine condition.