A rewarding, if tough book to read, Parent's thesis is that the creation of an authoritarian slavery-based society in Virginia was a conscious choice of the social leadership of the colony, not the result of a fit of absent-mindedness. The real teeth-grinding portions come when Parent examines the legal machinery by how the colonial elite beggered the native tribes, the lower rungs of white Virginia society, and then the African slaves. That these so-called "Great Planters" had trouble making their authority stick against the rest of the social order suggests why a slave society had to be created. One almost wants to cheer for the English and Scottish businessmen whom the planters bemoaned being endebted to, as they were the only force seemingly able to quell the pretentions of the upper echelon of Virginia society to being lords of the Earth. Unlike some other authors I've read of late, Parent is not apologetic about his social critique, and this is a better book for that fact. ( )