Gallagher, will read and discuss his new book, Loom.  Loom traces how the men who built the backbone of American capitalism—the power loom that enabled cotton manufacturing—fueled slavery and the removal of Native Americans from the eastern United States. After decades of defending their “unholy alliance” against abolitionists, the Boston elite saw the Fugitive Slave Act as a step too far and became “stark mad abolitionists.” LOOM is inspired, derived, and adapted from the memoirs and correspondences of antebellum Boston, Lowell, and Lawrence elites and abolitionists, as well as southern plantation owners, governors, and the slaves themselves. Dr. Kevin P. Gallagher is a Professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, where he co-directs the Global Economic Governance Initiative and the Global Development Policy Program.