The Virtues of Pennyroyal is the tale of Bernard Mason, a con artist and amateur musician whose debts force him to quit London on a trade ship bound for the anonymous safety of colonial Massachusetts. He surfaces in the burgeoning village of Barnstable, where he quickly ingratiates himself with the devout but naive locals. Over time, Bernard becomes an influential member of the village, marrying into one of the founding families. His son Isaac is a musical prodigy whose abilities assure Be...

Two time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bernard Bailyn has distilled a lifetime of study into this brilliant illumination of the ideas and world of the Founding Fathers. In five succinct essays he reveals the origins, depth, and global impact of their extraordinary creativity.The opening essay illuminates the central importance of America’s provincialism to the formation of a truly original political system. In the chapters following, he explores the ambiguities and achievements ...

According to Wikipedia: "Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 March 22, 1758) was a colonial American Congregational preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian". His work is very broad in scope, but he is often associated with his defense of Calvinist theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. His famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Ang...

*Includes Revere's account of his Midnight Ride and Longfellow's famous poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere"*Discusses some of the myths and legends about the Midnight Ride and the Battles of Lexington & Concord, including the debate over who fired first. *Includes pictures of important people, places, and events. *Includes a Table of Contents. "Out started six officers, seized my bridle, put their pistols to my breast, ordered me to dismount, which I did. One of them, who appeared to have...

"At once a penetrating work of literary analysis and a riveting historical narrative." -Nathaniel PhilbrickMerging maritime adventure and early colonial history, A Brave Vessel charts a little-known chapter of the past that offers a window on the inspiration for one of Shakespeare's greatest works. In 1609, aspiring writer William Strachey set sail for the New World aboard the Sea Venture, only to wreck on the shores of Bermuda. Strachey's meticul...

Susanah Shaw Romney locates the foundations of the early modern Dutch empire in interpersonal transactions among women and men. As West India Company ships began sailing westward in the early seventeenth century, soldiers, sailors, and settlers drew on kin and social relationships to function within an Atlantic economy and the nascent colony of New Netherland. In the greater Hudson Valley, Dutch newcomers, Native American residents, and enslaved Africans wove a series of intimate networks ...

The stories we tell of American beginnings typically emphasize colonial triumph in the face of adversity. But the early years of English settlement in America were characterized by catastrophe: starvation, disease, extreme violence, ruinous ignorance, and serial abandonment. Seasons of Misery offers a provocative reexamination of the British colonies' chaotic and profoundly unstable beginnings, placing crisis—both experiential and existential—at the center of the story. At the out...

This bundle book is a compilation of three of KidCaps top selling history books; it is the first in a three-part volume.The first volume presents the following wars in an easy to understand format that kids love:*The American Revolution*The Boston Tea Party*The Civil War

The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which officially recognized the United States as a sovereign republic, also doubled the territorial girth of the original thirteen colonies. The fledgling nation now stretched from the coast of Maine to the Mississippi River and up to the Great Lakes. With this dramatic expansion, argues author Bethel Saler, the United States simultaneously became a postcolonial republic and gained a domestic empire. The competing demands of governing an empire and a republic inev...

In "The Beginnings of New England," John Fiske offers a comprehensive narrative of the early colonial period, chronicling the foundation and development of New England from the late 16th century through the early 18th century. Fiske's literary style combines engaging storytelling with meticulous historical detail, reflecting the intellectual currents of the late 19th century. He employs a thematic approach that emphasizes the interplay between Puritan ideals and the socio-political landsca...

Why do narratives of Indian captivity emerge in New England between 1682 and 1707 and why are these texts, so centrally concerned with women's experience, supported and even written by a powerful group of Puritan ministers? In The Captive's Position, Teresa Toulouse argues for a new interpretation of the captivity narrative—one that takes into account the profound shifts in political and social authority and legitimacy that occurred in New England at the end of the seventeenth cen...

Stuyvesant Bound is an innovative and compelling evaluation of the last director general of New Netherland. Donna Merwick examines the layers of culture in which Peter Stuyvesant forged his career and performed his responsibilities, ultimately reappraising the view of Stuyvesant long held by the majority of U.S. historians and commentators.Borrowing its form from the genre of eighteenth- and nineteenth-?century learned essays, Stuyvesant Bound invites the reader t...