It focuses on the Jewish involvement in the American slave trade and is a polemical rebuttal against the 1991 work The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.

Overall, Miller concludes that Friedman's book is a worthy effort but is unlikely to have a significant impact due to its focus on academic audiences rather than the general public.

He concurs with the previous reviewers, noting that Friedman "has succeeded..., in refuting the strongest forms of the assertions of Jewish dominance of the institutions of slavery".

[3] In 2001 the book was reviewed by Daniel C. Littlefield for American Jewish History, who also noted that the topic has major relevance to the area of African American-Jewish relations.

On the book's main subject, he observes that "without claiming that Jews were nowhere ever involved in slavery or the slave trade, [the author] fairly effectively demonstrates that they dominated neither".