The History Book Club discussion
AMERICAN HISTORY
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COLONIAL HISTORY
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Jerome, Assisting Moderator - Upcoming Books and Releases
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Release date: November 11, 2014
Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans
by Malcolm Gaskill (no photo)Synopsis:
Over 350,000 intrepid English men, women, and children migrated to America in the 17th century, leaving behind their homeland for an uncertain future on distant shores. Whether they settled in Jamestown, Salem, or Barbados, these early English migrants—entrepreneurs, soldiers, and pilgrims alike—sought to recreate their old country in the new land.
Yet as Malcolm Gaskill reveals in Between Two Worlds, colonists’ efforts to remake England and retain their Englishness proved impossible. As they strove to leave their mark on the New World, they too were altered: by harsh wilderness, by illness and infighting, and by bloody battles with Indians. Gradually acclimating to their new environment, later generations realized that they were perhaps not even English at all. These were the first Americans, and their newfound independence would propel them along the path toward rebellion.
A major work of transatlantic history, Between Two Worlds brilliantly illuminates the long, complicated, and often traumatic process by which English colonists became American.
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by Lorri Glover (no photo)Synopsis:
The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when in 1606 Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster. Within two years warfare with Indians and dissent among the settlers threatened to destroy Smythe’s Jamestown just as it had Raleigh’s Roanoke a generation earlier.
To rescue the doomed colonists and restore order, the company chose a new leader, Thomas Gates. Nine ships left Plymouth in the summer of 1609—the largest fleet England had ever assembled—and sailed into the teeth of a storm so violent that “it beat all light from Heaven.” The inspiration for Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the hurricane separated the flagship from the fleet, driving it onto reefs off the coast of Bermuda—a lucky shipwreck (all hands survived) which proved the turning point in the colony’s fortune.
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by Hobson Woodward (no photo)Synopsis:
In 1609, aspiring writer William Strachey set sail aboard the Sea Venture, bound for the New World. Caught in a hurricane, the ship separated from its fleet and wrecked on uninhabited Bermuda, a bountiful island paradise its passengers would inhabit for nearly a year before reaching their intended destination, the famine-stricken colony of Jamestown. Strachey's meticulous account of the wreck, the castaways' time on Bermuda, and their arrival in a devastated Jamestown was read by his contemporaries and remains among the most vivid writings of the early colonial period. Following the life of this ordinary man, Hobson Woodward tells one of the neglected but defining stories of America's founding.
Strachey had literary aspirations and sought to capitalize on his epic experience, but his writings did not bring him the acclaim he sought. Only in the hands of another William would his tale of the wreck and its aftermath make history as The Tempest. A Brave Vessel is the fascinating account of a near-miss in the settling of Virginia, the true story behind one of Shakespeare's great plays, and the tragedy of the man who failed as an author but who contributed to the creation of a masterpiece.
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by
Benjamin WoolleySynopsis:
Four centuries ago, and thirteen years before the Mayflower, a group of men—led by a one-armed ex-pirate, an epileptic aristocrat, a reprobate cleric, and a government spy—arrived in Virginia aboard a fleet of three ships and set about trying to create a settlement on a tiny island in the James River. Despite their shortcomings, and against the odds, they built Jamestown, a ramshackle outpost that laid the foundations of the British Empire and the United States of America.
Drawing on new discoveries, neglected sources, and manuscript collections scattered across the world, Savage Kingdom challenges the textbook image of Jamestown—revealing instead a reckless, daring enterprise led by outcasts of the Old World who found themselves interlopers in a new one.
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by David A. Price (no photo)Synopsis:
In 1606, approximately 105 British colonists sailed to America, seeking gold and a trade route to the Pacific. Instead, they found disease, hunger, and hostile natives. Ill prepared for such hardship, the men responded with incompetence and infighting; only the leadership of Captain John Smith averted doom for the first permanent English settlement in the New World.The Jamestown colony is one of the great survival stories of American history, and this book brings it fully to life for the first time. Drawing on extensive original documents, David A. Price paints intimate portraits of the major figures from the formidable monarch Chief Powhatan, to the resourceful but unpopular leader John Smith, to the spirited Pocahontas, who twice saved Smith’s life. He also gives a rare balanced view of relations between the settlers and the natives and debunks popular myths about the colony. This is a superb work of history, reminding us of the horrors and heroism that marked the dawning of our nation.
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by Michael Leroy Oberg (no photo)The above is what the citation in message 50 should look like, the book cover is available, no author's photo (so we place no photo at the end in parentheses) and the author's link which is the author's name in linkable text.
I never noticed the parentheses message in book cover and author citations. Thank you.
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I should create a cheat sheet with all of the variations for folks as a reference in addition to the Mechanics of the Board thread.
So I've been reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and it has turned the idea of Eden-like Pre-Columbian North America on its head. There is a lot of evidence that there were scores of different civilizations that built infrastructure that rivaled many of the advanced cities in Europe.But schools still teach the Eden vision of North America. Why is it that newer evidence of historical trends take their time getting into the classroom?
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by John L. Kessell (no photo)Synopsis:
John L. Kessell’s Spain in the Southwest presents a fast-paced, abundantly illustrated history of the Spanish colonies that became the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. With an eye for human interest, Kessell tells the story of New Spain’s vast frontier--today’s American Southwest and Mexican North--which for two centuries served as a dynamic yet disjoined periphery of the Spanish empire.
Chronicling the period of Hispanic activity from the time of Columbus to Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, Kessell traces the three great swells of Hispanic exploration, encounter, and influence that rolled north from Mexico across the coasts and high deserts of the western borderlands. Throughout this sprawling historical landscape, Kessell treats grand themes through the lives of individuals. He explains the frequent cultural clashes and accommodations in remarkably balanced terms. Stereotypes, the author writes, are of no help. Indians could be arrogant and brutal, Spaniards caring, and vice versa. If we select the facts to fit preconceived notions, we can make the story come out the way we want, but if the peoples of the colonial Southwest are seen as they really were--more alike than diverse, sharing similar inconstant natures--then we need have no favorites.
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by Walter L. Hixson (no photo)Synopsis:
Over the course of three centuries, American settlers spread throughout North America and beyond, driving out indigenous populations to establish exclusive and permanent homelands of their own. In doing so, they helped to create the richest and most powerful nation in human history, even as they caused the death and displacement of millions of people. This groundbreaking historical synthesis demonstrates that the United States is and has always been fundamentally a settler colonial society - and, indeed, that its growth as a country represents the most sweeping, violent, and significant instance of the phenomenon in history. Linking episodes too often treated in isolation - including Indian removal, the Mexican and Civil Wars, and the settlement of Alaska and Hawaii - it upends many familiar categories of US history and presents a compelling yet disturbing framework through which to understand America's rise to global dominance
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by Tim Hashaw (no photo)Synopsis:
The voyage that shaped early America was neither that of the Susan Constant in 1607 nor the Mayflower in 1620. Absolutely vital to the formation of English-speaking America was the voyage made by some sixty Africans stolen from a Spanish slave ship and brought to the young struggling colony of Jamestown in 1619. It was an act of colonial piracy that angered King James I of England, causing him to carve up the Virginia Company's monopoly for virtually all of North America. It was an infusion of brave and competent souls who were essential to Jamestown's survival and success. And it was the arrival of pioneers who would fire the first salvos in the centuries-long African-American battle for liberation. Until now, it has been buried by historians. Four hundred years after the birth of English-speaking America, as a nation turns its attention to its ancestry, The Birth of Black America reconstructs the true origins of the United States and of the African-American experience.
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by Tony Williams (no photo)Synopsis:
The settlers who established America's first permanent English colony at Jamestown were not seeking religious or personal freedom. They were comprised of gentlemen adventurers and common tradesmen who risked their lives and fortunes on the venture and stood to reap the rewards-the rewards of personal profit and the glory of mother England. If they could live long enough to see their dream come to life.
The Jamestown Experiment is the dramatic, engaging, and tumultuous story of one of the most audacious business efforts in Western history. It is the story of well-known figures like John Smith setting out to create a source of wealth not bestowed by heritage. As they struggled to make this dream come true, they would face relentless calamities, including mutinies, shipwrecks, native attacks, and even cannibalism. And at every step of the way, the decisions they made to keep this business alive would not only affect their effort, but would shape the future of the land on which they had settled in ways they never could have expected.
The Jamestown Experiment is the untold story of the unlikely and dramatic events that defined the "self-made man" and gave birth to the American dream.
John wrote: "So I've been..."Thanks John. More and more programs are being set up to train teachers on American history, but I think it is hard, especially in colonial history. I think most history teachers don't major in history, which should be a requirement for all subjects...but that is my opinion. Double major, I say, in history and education.
Don't forget the proper citation:
by
Charles C. Mann
Bryan wrote: "John wrote: "So I've been..."Thanks John. More and more programs are being set up to train teachers on American history, but I think it is hard, especially in colonial history. I think most his..."
I don't know where things stand now, but I recall that history was the class that was often assigned to the basketball or football coaches because the administrators felt it was easier to master than sicence, math, or god forbid - grammar and English. I recall many classes where we would just take turns reading the textbook out loud until someone distracted the coach into an analysis of the last or next big game. Somehow, in spite of that, I love history.
At the middle school where I taught, the teachers (myself included) who taught history knew their subject matter and taught it individualistically. I can't say with certainty that one or two used the textbook extensively. I rarely did, preferring to assemble and organize information from various sources and present it in an outlined form, the students filling in the outline as we discussed the material. Whenever possible, my students read about specific incidents or individual experiences within a particular time period -- what a dust bowl farmer had to say about surviving in the 1930s, for example. It pains me to hear of coaches teaching the subject and not respecting it. Fortunately, that didn't happen at my school.
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Release date: January 13, 2015
A Path in the Mighty Waters: Shipboard Life and Atlantic Crossings to the New World
by Stephen R. Berry (no photo)Synopsis:
This book tells the story of how people experienced the eighteenth-century crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, exploring the transformative journey undertaken by the thousands of Europeans who journeyed in search of a better life. Stephen Berry shows how the ships, on which passengers were contained in close quarters for months at a time, operated as compressed “frontiers,” where diverse groups encountered one another and established new patterns of social organization.
As he argues that experiences aboard ship served as a profound conversion experience for travelers, both spiritually and culturally, Berry reframes the history of Atlantic migrations, giving the ocean and the ship a more prominent role in Atlantic history. The ocean was more than a backdrop for human events: it actively shaped historical experiences by furnishing a dissociative break from normal patterns of life and a formative stage in travelers’ processes of collective identification.
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Release date: September 16, 2014
The Forty Years That Created America: The Story of the Explorers, Promoters, Investors, and Settlers Who Founded the First English Colonies
by Edward M Lamont (no photo)Synopsis:
The names Jamestown and Plymouth have become synonymous for most students of American history with founding, and birth both, of the American nation, and of freedom and democracy themselves. In this book, author Ted Lamont asks us to reconsider our country s formative years, and explore the stories, lives, achievements, and failures of America s earliest founding fathers: those who paved the way for the Colonial Era, and the American Revolution. They were explorers, investors, passionate religious leaders, and determined developers who struggled for generations to successfully plant the English flag in this strange new soil.
Lamont deftly details the ways in which the stories and struggles of figures like Sir Walter Raleigh, Bartholomew Gosnold, Richard Hakluyt, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Captain John Smith were not just related, but connected in ways that help us better understand the colonies and culture born of their efforts. The infancy of America from Roanoke's founding in 1585 through the firm establishment of Jamestown and Plymouth in 1625 is where we first see planted the seeds of the rest of America's colonial, economic, political, and cultural history, that was the immensely difficult, and often overlooked, first step toward the New World we are still working to perfect.
Independence: The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution
by Thomas P. Slaughter (no photo)Synopsis:
An important new interpretation of the American colonists’ 150-year struggle to achieve independence
“What do we mean by the Revolution?” John Adams asked Thomas Jefferson in 1815. "The war? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it." As the distinguished historian Thomas P. Slaughter shows in this landmark book, the long process of revolution reached back more than a century before 1776, and it touched on virtually every aspect of the colonies’ laws, commerce, social structures, religious sentiments, family ties, and political interests. And Slaughter’s comprehensive work makes clear that the British who chose to go to North America chafed under imperial rule from the start, vigorously disputing many of the colonies’ founding charters.
When the British said the Americans were typically "independent," they meant to disparage them as lawless and disloyal. But the Americans insisted on their moral courage and political principles, and regarded their independence as a great virtue, as they regarded their love of freedom and their loyalty to local institutions. Over the years, their struggles to define this independence took many forms, and Slaughter’s compelling narrative takes us from New England and Nova Scotia to New York and Pennsylvania, and south to the Carolinas, as colonists resisted unsympathetic royal governors, smuggled to evade British duties on imported goods (tea was only one of many), and, eventually, began to organize for armed uprisings.
Britain, especially after its victories over France in the 1750s, was eager to crush these rebellions, but the Americans’ opposition only intensified, as did dark conspiracy theories about their enemies—whether British, Native American, or French.
In Independence, Slaughter resets and clarifies the terms in which we may understand this remarkable evolution, showing how and why a critical mass of colonists determined that they could not be both independent and subject to the British Crown. By 1775–76, they had become revolutionaries—going to war only reluctantly, as a last-ditch means to preserve the independence that they cherished as a birthright.
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by J.H. Elliott(no photo)Synopsis:
This epic history compares the empires built by Spain and Britain in the Americas, from Columbus’s arrival in the New World to the end of Spanish colonial rule in the early nineteenth century. J. H. Elliott, one of the most distinguished and versatile historians working today, offers us history on a grand scale, contrasting the worlds built by Britain and by Spain on the ruins of the civilizations they encountered and destroyed in North and South America.
Elliott identifies and explains both the similarities and differences in the two empires’ processes of colonization, the character of their colonial societies, their distinctive styles of imperial government, and the independence movements mounted against them. Based on wide reading in the history of the two great Atlantic civilizations, the book sets the Spanish and British colonial empires in the context of their own times and offers us insights into aspects of this dual history that still influence the Americas.
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by Karen Ordahl Kupperman (no photo)Synopsis:
In telling the tragic and heroic story of Roanoke, the “lost colony,” award-winning historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman recovers the earliest days of English exploration and settlement in America—the often forgotten years before Jamestown and the landing of the Mayflower.
Roanoke explores Britain’s attempt to establish a firm claim to North America in the hope that colonies would make England wealthy and powerful. Kupperman brings to life the men and women who struggled to carve out a settlement in an inhospitable environment on the Carolina coast and the complex Native American cultures they encountered. She reveals the mixture of goals and challenges that led to the colony’s eventual abandonment, and discusses the theories about what might have become of the first English settlers in the New World as they adapted to life as Indians.
With a new preface and afterword written by the author, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony brings the fascinating story of America’s earliest settlement up-to-date, bringing together new work from scholars in a variety of fields. The story of Roanoke remains endlessly fascinating. It is a tale marked by courage, miscalculation, exhilaration, intrigue, and mystery.
This book has been around for awhile. I haven't read it, but I have read the books by David Beers Quinn, Lee Miller, James Horn, and Michael Leroy Oberg. Every historian that attempts to report objectively the events that transpired at and near Roanoke from 1584 through 1590 is limited by the paucity of information provided by the few Englishmen Walter Raleigh assigned to write reports. Historians end up having to speculate to fill holes of information. They have to make judgment calls as to the veracity of some of the content, especially that of Governor Ralph Lane. And, of course, we have nothing from the Algonquian natives. Indeed,"the Story of Roanoke remains endlessly fascinating."
by David Beers Quinn (no photo)
by Lee Miller (no photo)
by James Horn(no photo)
by Michael Leroy Oberg(no photo)
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by Margaret F. Pickett (no photo)Synopsis:
This history of early European colonial efforts in North America (specifically, the portion north of Mexico and the Caribbean) examines why three colonies-St. Augustine, Jamestown and Quebec-succeeded where many before them had failed. Chapters cover Columbus' exploration and the Treaty of Tordesillas; other Spanish explorers and settlements in the New World; French attempts at settlement prior to Quebec; early English settlements, including Roanoke; failed settlements dating to the Norse enclaves on Greenland; and in-depth studies of the three colonies that survived.
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by James Pritchard (no photo)Synopsis:
This account of French settlers, who came to the Americas from 1670 through 1730, examines how they and thousands of African slaves (together with Amerindians) constructed settlements and produced and traded commodities for export. Bringing together much new evidence, James Pritchard explores how the newly constructed societies and new economies (without precedent in France) interacted with international violence in the Atlantic world and presents a new perspective on the diverse French colonizing experience in the Americas.
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by David Childs (no photo)Synopsis:
Within a generation of Columbus's first landfall in the Caribbean, Spain ruled an empire in Central and South America many times its size, while, in stark contrast, the English had only succeeded in settling the banks of one waterway and several bays. Invading America examines English development by reviewing the voyages, the conflict with the native peoples, the lack of leadership and the unrealistic ambitions. Using documentary evidence and vivid first-hand accounts, it offers a new perspective on the often tragic, sometimes heroic, English attempts at settlement.
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by Jaap Jacobs (no photo)Synopsis:
The Dutch involvement in North America started after Henry Hudson, sailing under a Dutch flag in 1609, traveled up the river that would later bear his name. The Dutch control of the region was short-lived, but had profound effects on the Hudson Valley region. In The Colony of New Netherland, Jaap Jacobs offers a comprehensive history of the Dutch colony on the Hudson from the first trading voyages in the 1610s to 1674, when the Dutch ceded the colony to the English.
As Jacobs shows, New Netherland offers a distinctive example of economic colonization and in its social and religious profile represents a noteworthy divergence from the English colonization in North America. Centered around New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, the colony extended north to present-day Schenectady, New York, east to central Connecticut, and south to the border shared by Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, leaving an indelible imprint on the culture, political geography, and language of the early modern mid-Atlantic region. Dutch colonists' vivid accounts of the land and people of the area shaped European perceptions of this bountiful land; their own activities had a lasting effect on land use and the flora and fauna of New York State, in particular, as well as on relations with the Native people with whom they traded.
Sure to become readers' first reference to this crucial phase of American early colonial history, The Colony of New Netherland is a multifaceted and detailed depiction of life in the colony, from exploration and settlement through governance, trade, and agriculture. Jacobs gives a keen sense of the built environment and social relations of the Dutch colonists and closely examines the influence of the church and the social system adapted from that of the Dutch Republic. Although Jacobs focuses his narrative on the realities of quotidian existence in the colony, he considers that way of life in the broader context of the Dutch Atlantic and in comparison to other European settlements in North America.
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by Mary K. Geiter (no photo)Synopsis:
Colonial America deals with the development of the American colonies from the first permanent settlement at Jamestown to the independence of the 13 which became the US. Instead of anticipating the birth of a nation, Mary K. Geiter and W. A. Speck treat the history of the colonies as part of the wider history of the British Empire, including colonies in the Americas which did not rebel against British rule, such as the islands in the West Indies. In this way, Geiter and Speck demonstrate how Britain and America shared a common history for nearly 200 years.
The Politics of Piracy: Crime and Civil Disobedience in Colonial America
by Douglas R. Burgess Jr. (no photo)Synopsis:
The seventeenth-century war on piracy is remembered as a triumph for the English state and her Atlantic colonies. Yet it was piracy and illicit trade that drove a wedge between them, imperiling the American enterprise and bringing the colonies to the verge of rebellion. In The Politics of Piracy, competing criminalities become a lens to examine England’s legal relationship with America.
In contrast to the rough, unlettered stereotypes associated with them, pirates and illicit traders moved easily in colonial society, attaining respectability and even political office. The goods they provided became a cornerstone of colonial trade, transforming port cities from barren outposts into rich and extravagant capitals. This transformation reached the political sphere as well, as colonial governors furnished local mariners with privateering commissions, presided over prize courts that validated stolen wares, and fiercely defended their prerogatives as vice-admirals. By the end of the century, the social and political structures erected in the colonies to protect illicit trade came to represent a new and potent force: nothing less than an independent American legal system. Tensions between Crown and colonies presage, and may predestine, the ultimate dissolution of their relationship in 1776.
Exhaustively researched and rich with anecdotes about the pirates and their pursuers, The Politics of Piracy will be a fascinating read for scholars, enthusiasts, and anyone with an interest in the wild and tumultuous world of the Atlantic buccaneers.
American Colonial History: Clashing Cultures and Faiths
by Thomas S. Kidd (no photo)Synopsis:
Thomas Kidd, a widely respected scholar of colonial history, deftly offers both depth and breadth in this accessible, introductory text on the American Colonial era. Interweaving primary documents and new scholarship with a vivid narrative reconstructing the lives of European colonists, Africans, and Native Americans and their encounters in colonial North America, Kidd offers fresh perspectives on these events and the period as a whole. This compelling volume is organized around themes of religion and conflict, and distinguished by its incorporation of an expanded geographic frame.
This is one of my go-to books for genealogy research for this area / time:Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary
by Martha W. McCartney (no photo)Synopsis:
This book brings together a variety of primary sources that inform the reader about Virginia's earliest European inhabitants and the sparsely populated and fragile communities in which they lived, resulting in the most comprehensive collection of annotated biographical sketches yet published. Ms. McCartney conveys the basics about many of these original colonists: their origins, the names of the ships they sailed on, the names of the "hundreds" and "plantations" they inhabited, the names of their spouses and children, their occupations and their position in the colony, their relationships with fellow colonists and Indian neighbors, their living conditions as far as can be ascertained from documentary sources, their ownership of land, the dates and circumstances of their death, and a host of fascinating, sometimes incidental details about their personal lives, all gathered together in the handy format of a biographical dictionary.
Maps provided here identify the sites at which Virginia's earliest plantations were located and enable genealogists and students of colonial history to link most of the more than 5,500 people included in this volume to the cultural landscape. An introductory chapter, moreover, includes an overview of local and regional settlement and provides succinct histories of the various plantations established in Tidewater Virginia by 1635.
Here are two books on early Colonial America that I recently completed for a class I'm taking.The first is a recent history of early colonial America that turns things around for a fresh perspective. Instead of starting at the coast and looking west, it looks east toward the ocean and explores the arrival of Europeans as a meeting between two maritime peoples. We don't think of Native Americans in that way, but Lipman provides solid evidence that this flip is worth considering. I believe that he sometimes stretches the point, but it's a fascinating read. The geographic area that he focuses on is from the New York area to the Boston area.
The second book was published in 1975 and has become a classic study of colonial Virginia, including the transition from indentured servants to slaves. The attitude toward Native Americans is especially eye-opening when you learn the details of the early days of the Jamestown colony. For various reasons (mostly idleness), the early colonists just couldn't grow enough food to feed themselves, and they regularly turned to the local tribes for corn to survive. Yet they would murder Natives, burn their villages and BURN THEIR CORN over minor offenses - yet a few months later, they would go to these same people and beg for corn to survive. This and many other stories were new to me. Don't let the publication date scare you off. It's still an excellent look at the first one hundred years or so of Virginia's colonial history.
by Andrew Lipman (no Photo)
by
Edmund S. Morgan
Dave wrote: "Here are two books on early Colonial America that I recently completed for a class I'm taking.The first is a recent history of early colonial America that turns things around for a fresh perspect..."
Fantastic, Dave! I'm always looking for more information on Jamestown, so that one is of particular interest to me. Thanks for the reviews.
Well, I seem to have found another book that doesn't quite fit in any of our categories, but since approximately 2/3 of the book focuses on the colonial period in American history, I dropped it here.This book is definitely a different perspective on US history - a view of history seen through the lens of fashions in the colonies, during the War of Independence and during the early years of the nation. Fashion had more influence than you might think. Initially the colonies' upper classes strove to mimic English and French fashions. During the revolution, it was seen to be more patriotic to wear local leather and homespun clothing. But shortly after the war, people were eager to return to the European fabrics and styles that many had abandoned. It's an interesting book that looks at fashion and politics, the economy and society. The 18th century cartoons are fabulous - especially depictions of the fashion fops. And who knew that hoop skirts were so lewd?
by Kate Haulman (no photo)
That is right up my alley, Dave! Thanks for posting it. Was it a worthy read?
Teri wrote: "That is right up my alley, Dave! Thanks for posting it. Was it a worthy read?"It was. I read it for a class, otherwise I probably never would have found it, and it isn't always light, but it was fascinating.
American Colonies: The Settling of North America
by
Alan TaylorSynopsis
A multicultural, multinational history of colonial America from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Internal Enemy and American Revolutions
In the first volume in the Penguin History of the United States, edited by Eric Foner, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America, from the native inhabitants from milennia past, through the decades of Western colonization and conquest, and across the entire continent, all the way to the Pacific coast.
Transcending the usual Anglocentric version of our colonial past, he recovers the importance of Native American tribes, African slaves, and the rival empires of France, Spain, the Netherlands, and even Russia in the colonization of North America. Moving beyond the Atlantic seaboard to examine the entire continent, American Colonies reveals a pivotal period in the global interaction of peoples, cultures, plants, animals, and microbes. In a vivid narrative, Taylor draws upon cutting-edge scholarship to create a timely picture of the colonial world characterized by an interplay of freedom and slavery, opportunity and loss.
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Release date: March 6, 2018
Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World
by James Evans (no photo)Synopsis:
During the course of the seventeenth century nearly 400,000 people left Britain for the Americas, most of them from England. Crossing the Atlantic was a major undertaking, the voyage long and treacherous. There was little hope of returning to see the friends and family who stayed behind. Why did so many go?
A significant number went for religious reasons, either on the Mayflower or as part of the mass migration to New England; some sought their fortunes in gold, fish or fur; some went to farm tobacco in Virginia, a booming trade which would enmesh Europe in a new addiction. Some went because they were loyal to the deposed Stuart king, while others yearned for an entirely new ambition - the freedom to think as they chose. Then there were the desperate: starving and impoverished people who went because things had not worked out in the Old World and there was little to lose from trying again in the New.
Emigrants casts light on this unprecedented population shift - a phenomenon that underpins the rise of modern America. Using contemporary sources including diaries, court hearings and letters, James Evans brings to light the extraordinary personal stories of the men and women who made the journey of a lifetime.
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Release date: March 20, 2018
New World, Inc.: How England's Merchant Adventurers Created America
by John Butman (no photo)Synopsis:
The Pilgrims didn't found America.
Some seventy years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed the "The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown", the world's first joint stock company. Back then, in the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe, and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems. Struggling with a single export-woollen cloth-the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners, especially as political discord followed the straitened circumstances in which so many English people found themselves.
At first, they turned East and dreamed of reaching Cathay-China, with its silks and other luxuries. Eventually, they turned West, and so began a whole new chapter in world history. The work of reaching the New World required the very latest in a navigational science as well as an extraordinary appetite for risk. As this absorbing work of history shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive. Trade and business drove the founding of America, and determined what happened once English ships reached the New World.
The result of extensive archival work, and a bold new interpretation of the historical record, New World, Inc. draws a portrait of life in London, on the Atlantic, and across the New World that offers a new understanding of the earliest chapter in American history. In the tradition of the best works of history that make us reconsider the past, and better understand the present, New World Inc. examines the enterprising spirit that drove the settlement of America, and which helped to establish the American spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation that continues to this day.
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Release date: October 30, 2018
Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin
by Joseph Kelly (no photo)Synopsis:
We all know the great American origin story. It begins with an exodus. Fleeing religious persecution, the hardworking, pious Pilgrims thrived in the wilds of New England, where they built their fabled city on a hill. Legend goes that the colony in Jamestown was a false start, offering a cautionary tale. Lazy louts hunted gold till they starved, and the shiftless settlers had to be rescued by English food and the hard discipline of martial law.
Neither story is true. In Marooned, Joseph Kelly reexamines the history of Jamestown and comes to a radically different and decidedly American interpretation of these first Virginians.
In this gripping account of shipwrecks and mutiny in America's earliest settlements, Kelly argues that the colonists at Jamestown were literally and figuratively marooned, cut loose from civilization, and cast into the wilderness. The British caste system meant little on this frontier: those who wanted to survive had to learn to work and fight and intermingle with the nearby native populations. Ten years before the Mayflower Compact and decades before Hobbes and Locke, they invented the idea of government by the people. 150 years before Jefferson, they discovered the truth that all men were equal.
The epic origin of America was not an exodus and a fledgling theocracy. It is a tale of shipwrecked castaways of all classes marooned in the wilderness fending for themselves in any way they could--a story that illuminates who we are today.
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A recently published book about Colonial America and the forging of a nation with the intrigue of an external and internal plot to abduct or kill the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, George Washington; and the rudimentary beginnings of counter-espionage. The book covers Washington's command in Boston and New York and the imminent threat of conflict with the British navy and army.
by
Brad Meltzer.
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by David MacDonald (no photo)Synopsis:
The nations of the modern Americas began as successful colonies, but not all colonies succeeded, and the margin between colonies that survived and those that failed was small. Both contribute to our understanding of the ordeals of the Europeans who first settled in the New World and of the Native Americans who had to interact with them, but with the exception of the famous lost Roanoke colony, the failed colonies of North America remain largely unknown except to specialists in colonial history.
The Spanish and French repeatedly attempted to colonize parts of Georgia, Florida, and Virginia, while the Dutch, French, and English sought to establish permanent settlements along the northern waterways of the New World. The greatest problem faced by every colony was the specter of starvation. Native Americans gave food to newly arrived colonists, but such generosity could not endure. Indigenous people soon realized that colonists of every nationality were prepared to make war against Native peoples, conquer, subjugate, and even massacre whole communities unless they were cooperative and offered no resistance to the intrusion into their territory. In response, Native Americans withheld aid or resorted to retaliatory violence, dooming many European settlements.
In We Could Perceive No Sign of Them: Failed Colonies in North America, 1526–1689, historians David MacDonald and Raine Waters tell the fascinating stories of the many attempts to establish a European foothold in the New World, from the first Spanish colony in 1526 on the coast of Georgia to the final disastrous French endeavors near the arctic. Using primary source texts, the authors synthesize the shared experiences of Europeans to better understand the very fine line between success and failure and the varieties of Native American responses.
The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island
by
Scott DawsonSynopsis:
New discoveries link the lost colony of Roanoke to Hatteras Island.
The legend of the Lost Colony has been captivating imaginations for nearly a century. When they left Roanoke Island, where did they go? What is the meaning of the mysterious word Croatoan? In the sixteenth century, Croatoan was the name of an island to the south now known as Hatteras. Scholars have long considered the island as one of the colonists' possible destinations, but only recently has anyone set out to prove it. Archaeologists from the University of Bristol, working with local residents through the Croatoan Archaeological Society, have uncovered tantalizing clues to the fate of the colony.
Hatteras native and amateur archaeologist Scott Dawson compiles what scholars know about the Lost Colony along with what scholars have found beneath the soil of Hatteras.
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America (other topics)The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island (other topics)
We Could Perceive No Sign of Them: Failed Colonies in North America, 1526–1689 (other topics)
The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington (other topics)
Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Russell Shorto (other topics)Scott Dawson (other topics)
David MacDonald (other topics)
Brad Meltzer (other topics)
Joseph Kelly (other topics)
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Synopsis:
On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he’s mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown’s founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.
An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs—these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.
Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek—from Florida’s Fountain of Youth to Plymouth’s sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges—Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.