Born in Brooklyn, New York, Eugene Genovese was educated at Brooklyn College and Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1959. He has served as Pitt Professor of American History at Cambridge University and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University Center in Georgia. An erudite, unconventional, and often unpredictable Marxist, Genovese has forced historians of the Old South---and especially of slavery---to think in new ways about important questions. Ranging over a multitude of topics, his work is concerned mainly with the relationship between economic factors, social conditions, and culture. Of his best-known work. Roll, Jordan, Roll (1974), David Brion Davis wrote:… "Genovese's great gift is his ability to penetrate the minds of both slaves and masters, revealing not only how they viewed themselves and each other, but also how their contradictory perceptions interacted" (N.Y. Times Book Review).