I’d like to wholeheartedly recommend Andrea Stuart’s wonderful new book, which was featured on both NPR and given a stellar review in The New York Times. It tells the story of the history of Barbados, through a richly researched and detailed lens of her own family history and the story of sugar and the wealth it brought to England. She begins with her white ancestor, who established a sugar plantation in the 1630s, and goes down the generations through his white—and later black—progeny. She writes beautifully, and I couldn’t put it down. (In the interest of full disclosure, I know the author, who lives in England.)