This book by David K. O’Rourke presents a study of language and linguistic forms and the roles they played in the initial imagining, developing, and maintaining of a society based on coerced labor. It focuses especially on the contexts of coercion and on the differences in the roles of masters and servants from society to society.

: The Many Lives of a Common Word describes historic episodes in the lives of these words, from the Greek oikos and Roman domus to our current family and home. This book also describes how these words and their current equivalents, home and family, are used as metaphors to illustrate how people who count are supposed to live and also to justify disinterest in people who do not count.