In Obeah, Race and Racism, Eugenia O'Neal vividly discusses the tradition of African magic and witchcraft, traces its voyage across the Atlantic and its subsequent evolution on the plantations of the New World, and provides a detailed map of how English writers, poets and dramatists interpreted it for English audiences. The triangular trade in guns and baubles, enslaved Africans and gold, sugar and cotton was mirrored by a similar intellectual trade borne in the reports, accounts and stories that fed the perceptions and prejudices of everyone involved in the slave trade and no subject was more fascinating and disconcerting to Europeans than the religious beliefs of the people they had enslaved. Indeed, African magic made its own triangular voyage; starting from Africa, Obeah crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, then journeyed back across the ocean, in the form of traveller's narratives and plantation reports, to Great Britain where it was incorporated into the plots of scores of books and stories which went on to shape and form the world view of explorers and colonial officials in Britain's far-flung empire. O'Neal examines what British writers knew or thought they knew about Obeah and discusses how their perceptions of black people were shaped by their perceptions of Obeah. Translated or interpreted by racist writers as a devil-worshipping religion, Obeah came to symbolize the brutality, savagery and superstition in which blacks were thought to be immured by their very race. For many writers, black belief in Obeah proved black inferiority and justified both slavery and white colonial domination. The English reading public became generally convinced that Obeah was evil and that blacks were, at worst, devil worshippers or, at best, extremely stupid and credulous. And because books and stories on Obeah continued to promulgate either of the two prevailing perspectives, and sometimes both together until at least the 1950s, theories of black inferiority continue to hold sway in Great Britain today.

In the last years of the nineteenth century an American tobacco company, Allen and Ginter, began inserting plain cards called 'stiffeners' into packets of cigarettes to protect their products from being crushed. What seemed at the time like an inconsequential product development was swiftly exploited for commercial purposes: to advertise other products and then illustrate the cards with popular personalities. These collectables swiftly became a phenomenon and crossed to the other side of the Atlantic. These cards were decorated by many different subjects: politicians, actors, writers, poets and sporting personalities, most significantly footballers. A craze that lasted for more than half a century was born. In an era before the widespread use of photography in print media and when the game was seldom captured by motion film, cigarette cards were often the most enduring portrayal of football's stars in the early twentieth century. Small boys would collect these cards from family and friends. Teams would be formed and, in a fore- runner of today's fantasy football games, the cards would be swapped and traded to see who could assemble the best team.Today they provide a compelling insight into a bygone era. Now, in The Redmen of Liverpool FC, Rowlands has shared his passion. Featuring every single Liverpool player featured in this medium, along with biographical details and contextual notes, Rowlands tells the story of the cigarette card craze. Presented in full colour, Redmen is a richly illustrated and deeply evocative window into one of football's bygone eras and an essential reference for every Liverpool fan.