"[Einhorn] tells what might have been a complicated story in an engaging and accessible manner. It is her contention that slavery and the reaction to it to a great extent shaped the kind of nation we are today, because it shaped the kind of tax policies we constructed to fund the kind of government we got. . . . Required reading for anyone who ponders the impact of slavery on our lives today."

James Srodes | Washington Times

“For those seeking to understand complex and ever-changing systems of taxation, their relationship to local and national politics, and how the state and local systems were shaped by the ‘peculiar institution,’ this seminal and innovative investigation will provide many answers.”

Loren Schweninger | American Historical Review

"Einhorn has undertaken important research in archives and in secondary sources on a major set of historical problems. This book will influence the analysis of colonial and antebellum tax systems, and it raises anew some of the central issues of colonial and antebellum history. The arguments are clearly and strongly made. . . . This book deservedly will be widely read and discussed."

Stanley L. Engerman | Journal of American History

"For those seeking to understand complex and everchanging systems of taxation, their relationship to local and national politics, and how the state and local systems were shaped by the ’peculiar institution,’ this seminal and innovative investigation will provide many answers."

Loren Schweninger | American Historical Review

"A valuable entry in the growing and much-needed literature examining the exact impact that slavery had on the American state in the early republic. . . . The book aims at nothing less than revising the central story that most Americans have accepted about the growth of the national state."

Matthew Mason | Journal of the Early Republic

"[Einhorn] scrupulously details the direct and indirect ways in which human bondage structured American taxation policies during the eighteenth century and the continued legacy of slavery for modern taxation. The result is a pathbreaking contribution to scholarship on antebellum constitutional politics. . . . This detailed study of federal and local tax policy is a remarkable easy read. American Taxation may be the most surprising page-turner of the early twenty-first century."

Mark A. Graber | H-Net Book Review

"With prodigious research . . . Einhorn’s masterful narrative challenges the conventional Jeffersonian story about the Southern yeoman origins of American liberty and anti-statism. . . . A book that needs to be read by those who continue to subscribe to the resilient Jeffersonian myth that liberty and democracy require weak government."

Ajay K. Mehrotra | Law and Politics Review

"[Einhorn’s] book is a treasure chest of informaiton about taxation in the colonies and early republic. She has written her work forcefully and lucidly; it is well worth the time of anyone interested in American Studies, as well as in the culture of slavery."

James L. Huston | American Studies