Showing titles in Colonial Period

For perspective on our own times and how we got here, it helps to listen to wise guides from other eras. In An Infinite Fountain of Light, the renowned American historian George Marsden illuminates the landscape with wisdom from one such mentor: Jonathan Edwards. Drawing on his deep expertise on Edwards and American culture, Marsden explains where Edwards stood within his historical context and sets forth key points of his complex thought.

In 1609, two years after its English founding, colonists struggled to stay alive in a tiny fort at Jamestown. John Smith fought to keep order. When he left, desperate colonists ate lizards, rats, and human flesh. Meanwhile, the Virginia-bound Sea Venture was shipwrecked on Bermuda, the dreaded, uninhabited “Isle of Devils”. Bermuda became England’s second New World colony in 1612. A Tale of Two Colonies examines the existing sources on the colonies, sets them in a transatlantic context, and weighs them against circumstantial evidence.

The True Story of Pocahontas is the first public publication of the Powhatan perspective that has been maintained and passed down from generation to generation within the Mattaponi Tribe, and the first written history of Pocahontas by her own people.

At least one‑third of the colonial population were neutrals during the American Revolution, yet they have rarely featured in narratives that shape our ideas about the conflict. By following a single transatlantic family, the Crugers, historian Travis Glasson puts neutrals—the "nobody men"—at the center of this tumultuous period's history.

In the spring of 1676, Nathaniel Bacon, a hotheaded young newcomer to Virginia, led a revolt against the colony's Indian policies. Bacon's Rebellion turned into a civil war within Virginia - and a war of extermination against the colony's Indian allies - that lasted into the following winter, sending shock waves throughout the British colonies and into England itself. James Rice offers a colorfully detailed account of the rebellion, revealing how Piscataways, English planters, slave traders, Susquehannocks, colonial officials, plunderers and intriguers were all pulled into an escalating conflict whose outcome, month by month, remained uncertain.

This compact volume of the journals of Lewis and Clark, compiled by American Book Award nominee Landon Y. Jones, includes all of the most riveting tales of their adventure—in their own words The journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark remain the single most important document in the...

Justin Pope’s ground-breaking work tells the story of an era of slave unrest that swept through the Atlantic World in the first half of the 18th century. Provinces along the eastern coast of North America and around the Caribbean Sea experienced more insurrections and conspiracy trials in the 1730s and 1740s than in any period before the Age of Revolution.

Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, written under the pseudonym Linda Brent, details her experiences as a slave in North Carolina, her escape to freedom in the north, and her ensuing struggles to free her children. The narrative was partly serialized in the New York Tribune, but was discontinued because Jacobs’ depictions of the sexual abuse of female slaves were considered too shocking. It was published in book form in 1861.

What was the bloodiest war in American history? Most people with at least a little knowledge of history would quickly say that it was the Civil War (1861-65), and they would certainly be correct overall. In recently-updated numbers, it is thought that over 750,000 Americans died in the Civil War from battle wounds, diseases and other causes. In a single day at the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, almost 27,000 soldiers were killed, wounded and missing.

In July 1776 a pair of Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, were charged by the governor of New Mexico with discovering a route across the unknown Southwest to the new Spanish colony in California. They had other goals as well, some of them secret: converting the indigenous natives along the way to the true faith, discovering a semi-mythical paradise known as Teguayo, hunting for sources of gold and silver, and paving the way for Spanish settlements from Santa Fe to Monterey. In strict terms, the expedition failed.

On July 9, 1755, British and colonial troops under the command of General Edward Braddock suffered a crushing defeat to French and Native American enemy forces in Ohio Country. Known as the Battle of the Monongahela, the loss altered the trajectory of the Seven Years' War in America, escalating the fighting and shifting the balance of power. An unprecedented rout of a modern and powerful British army by a predominantly Indian force, Monongahela shocked the colonial world.

The one character trait that, sometimes, surpasses the human instinct for survival is curiosity. When humans discovered an entire hemisphere that lay beyond their own Eastern Hemisphere, the race was on. What opportunities would these new lands hold? Surely, a small country in Europe could wield the power of an empire if it could claim these new lands in the Americas.

Puritan Christianity, Matthew J. Tuininga shows, shaped both the spiritual and military conquests of New England from beginning to end.

Did Columbus believe that God called him west to undiscovered lands? Does American democracy owe its inception to the handful of Pilgrims that settled at Plymouth? If, indeed, there was a specific, divine call upon this nation, is it still valid today?

After the Englishman Henry Hudson, under the aegis of the Dutch East India Company, sailed by Manhattan in 1609, he returned home with good news and bad news. Like the other explorers before him, he hadn't been able to find a water route to the Orient. He had, however, returned with maps and beaver pelts. With that, it became clear that the region around the bay was a promising new territory for trade and settlement, which would become a bone of contention between the Dutch and the English for the rest of the century.

The American Indian Wars, a series of conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans which took place in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, were complex, brutal, and many. An official United States Census report published in 1898 noted at least 40 wars which had taken place in the previous 100 years. The total number of individual wars probably numbers well over 100, though many were localized and on a very small scale.

Eyewitness to the Alamo is the actual account of the siege and Battle of the Alamo by those who were present during the attack. This book is the first complete accounting of the Battle of the Alamo by one of our country's foremost authorities on the event. Contains over 100 descriptions of the Battle of the Alamo by people who were witnesses or who claimed to have witnessed the event. These accounts are the basis for all of the histories, traditions, myths, and legends of this famous battle.

Francis J. Bremer focuses on the role of religion in the settlement of the Plymouth Colony and how those values influenced political, intellectual, and cultural aspects of New England life 150 years before the American Revolution. He traces the Puritans' persecution in early 17th-century England for challenging the established national church and the difficulties they faced as refugees in the Netherlands in the 1610s.  

"Presidential Scandals: Commanders in Deceit" is not merely a recounting of history; it is an invitation to reflect on the enduring challenges of governance, the nature of power, and the quest for moral leadership in the face of temptation and turmoil. This book is a must for history enthusiasts, political scholars, and anyone intrigued by the perennial question of how leaders navigate the thin line between right and wrong. It serves as a reminder that the legacies of presidents are often written in shades of gray, shaped by the choices they make under the weight of the office they hold.

What did it really take to build a nation? "The land of the free and the home of the brave" didn't just happen. It was forged through rebellion, sacrifice, and the leadership of extraordinary men and women willing to challenge an empire. In Leaders of the American Revolution, discover the people who helped shape the United States—from renowned founders such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin to the overlooked patriots and heroines whose contributions changed history.