how correct you are! I just finished Thomas Sowell's book "black rednecks and white liberals", which is eye opening. I had no idea about the muslims keeping so many African slaves until the West shut down the international slave trade. He referenced thousands of years of slavery that involved every corner of the earth and all peoples.
The best point he made was that for us to attribute a recent factor in slavery (whites owning blacks) is wholly dishonest in context of slavery's entire history.
Your suggestion about books is humorous, because in the military, we have black history month and every time the only books displayed are those of black militants and communists. Even in the main lobby of Walter Reed they had (last month, anyway) books by Angela Davis!! When I mention Thomas Sowell, who has authored at least 11 books, to black soldiers, I'm always asked who he is. How disappointing- they decry slavery, but enslave themselves to fruitcakes like farrakan and the nation of islam.
Serfdom was always a part of Christian societies but the kind of evil slavery we associate with the word came into existence in the mid 1400s. What happened was that the Mongols opened up trade routes which had been shut down for a thousand years and, then 150 years later, Tamerlane, a muslim fanatic, shut them down again, and Europeans, haven gotten used to spices and other oriental goods, started sailing around Africa. When those ships put into west African ports for food and water, the Africans figured they were just more muslims come to buy slaves, and opened up the slave markets. Welling excess people off as slaves was simply business as usual in such places at the time.