Which subreddit approved book do you need to tell you that slavery and serfdom weren't abolished in most of the world until the mid 19th century, much of it even later than that?

The problem with Zinn (whom I was forced to read in high school once upon a time as a brainwashed young leftist) isn't that he's wrong (he's usually not honestly), it's the complete and sometimes even willful dismissal of context in his writing and the ignorance of its implications. The fact that Columbus enslaved and killed a few thousand noble savages Caribs at a time when casualties in the Ottoman conquests or Chinese civil wars could be measured in mega deaths. The obsession with slavery despite the fact that it was only made possible by African tribes enslaving and selling one another (never mind that it was UK, France, and the fledgling United States which acted in unison to kill the slave trade). The fact that while yes the textile mills sucked ass, they still offered the possibility of saving enough to escape to the frontier and either purchase or receive a homestead when virtually nowhere else on earth did (certainly not a stagnant and diseased Europe), etc.

These don't need to be interpreted through the subjected lens of a Harvard academic, these are concrete historical facts. I understand it's a people's history of the United States but it stands to reason that it's a people whose quality of life apparently massively improved such that it logically precipitated their decision to come here, sometimes risking life and limb, in massive numbers over hundreds of years.