As sad as it is sensational, this book spotlights the many forms of bondage that dog this planet, particularly in the Third World, long after the United States abolished slavery. Or did it?

E. Benjamin Skinner claims 50,000 people, each with "an average term of enslavement lasting at least three years," live in the United States, most of them bonded farm laborers. Many are part of the 12 million illegal immigrants who make up that most vexing political football in this complex election season.

		"A CRIME SO MONSTROUS: FACE TO FACE WITH MODERN-DAY SLAVERY" By E. Benjamin Skinner Free Press ($26)

Still, the number of U.S. slaves is nothing compared to their number in India, where, Skinner claims, there are 20 million, most in debt bondage; that type of slave also is characteristic of the failed state of Haiti, he suggests.

Sex trafficking fuels slavery in Romania, its even weaker sibling Moldova, as well as Thailand and Dubai.

"Beginning in the 1990s, human trafficking metastasized faster than any other form of slave-trading in history," he writes. "Human beings surpassed guns as the second most lucrative commodity for crime syndicates of all sizes, netting around $10 billion annually."

Skinner dramatizes these statistics with stories of slaves and former slaves he met during travels to some very dangerous places. Some read like parables. Others, like that of Tatiana, a former Romanian prostitute who helps enslaved sex workers follow her to freedom, read like thrillers.

Based on five years of research put into this, his first -- and extraordinary -- book, Skinner claims there are 27 million slaves worldwide. He also suggests that prostitution, that interface of sex and servitude, clouds the issue, particularly in the United States, where efforts to abolish slavery are routinely politicized and, particularly during the Bush administration, evangelized.

Embodying its efforts to rid the globe of slavery, "George W. Bush did more to free modern-day slaves than any other president," Skinner writes.

"But on the subject of human bondage, history does not grade on a curve," said John Miller, former head of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which was established following passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000.

Skinner's profiles of Miller, John Eibner and Michael Gerson, the former Bush speechwriter, are insightful and provocative. Miller resigned in 2006 after four years of small success and large frustration.

Eibner, the director of Christian Solidarity International, has mounted anti-slavery efforts in Sudan that are questionable both in impact and finance, Skinner suggests.

Gerson, a reformed Democrat, crafted Bush speeches deploring slavery in Africa and Cuba in the fall of 2003. After he won re-election (and Gerson had a heart attack), Bush's anti-slavery pronouncements diminished.

Skinner doesn't know what happened to the victims he encountered and not knowing haunts him. His book will haunt you, too. It lays the groundwork for action.