To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, the University of Virginia Press reissues its first-ever publication. The volume’s two accounts of the 1609 wreck of a Jamestown-bound ship offer a gripping sea adventure from the earliest days of American colonization, but the dramatic events’ even greater claim to fame is for serving as the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s last major work, The Tempest.William Strachey was one of six hundred passengers sailing to Jamestown as pa...

From the author of Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, The Wordy Shipmates is New York Times bestselling author Sarah Vowell's exploration of the Puritans and their journey to America to become the people of John Winthrop's "city upon a hill," a shining example, a "city that cannot be hid."To this day, America views itself as a Puritan nation, but Vowell investigates what that means? and what it should mean. What was this great political ente...

VOICES OUT OF SLAVERY is a collection of twenty-three slave narratives dating from the early 1700s to the 1860s. All of these first-hand accounts of slavery provide valuable insight into the everyday lives of slaves, as well as incredible and disturbing descriptions of kidnappings, torture, and inhumane treatment. While often disturbing, many of the narratives also include themes of overcoming slavery, gaining freedom, and inspiring others to combat the evils of slavery.NARRA...

A fascinating profile of two generals who shaped history.In 1759, after the battle on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec City, the English general James Wolfe and the French general, Louis-Joseph Montcalm lay mortally wounded, each hit by a sniper's bullet. Neither could know that the outcome on the Plains of Abraham would shape the history of both the United States and Canada.After researching letters and journals and reading dozens of books, Joy Carroll has wri...

What if the 1587 Lost Colony of Roanoke was not lost? What if the survivors left Roanoke Island North Carolina and found their way to Georgia? That is the scenario scholars contemplated when a series of engraved stones were found in the 1930's. The first found near the Chowan River in North Carolina claimed that Eleanor Dare and a few other settlers had made their way inland after an Indian attack wiped out the rest of the colony. Among the dead were Eleanor's daughter Virginia Dare the fi...

This is the story of a city that shouldn’t exist. In the seventeenth century, what is now America’s most beguiling metropolis was nothing more than a swamp: prone to flooding, infested with snakes, battered by hurricanes. But through the intense imperial rivalries of Spain, France, and England, and the ambitious, entrepreneurial merchants and settlers from four continents who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America, this unpromising site became a crossroads for the whole Atlantic...

*Includes Benjamin Franklins Autobiography and a chronology of his life, John Woolmans Journal, and William Penns Fruits of Solitude. *Illustrated with images of Franklin, Woolman, and Penn. The Harvard Classics series is an incredible collection of the most important literary works, compiled by Charles Eliot (1834 1926), then president of Harvard University. Eliot stated that a liberal arts education could be supplemented by reading 15 minutes a day from classic works stored on a five foot...

The year 2000 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of A Little Commonwealth by Bancroft Prize-winning scholar John Demos. This groundbreaking study examines the family in the context of the colony founded by the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. Basing his work on physical artifacts, wills, estate inventories, and a variety of legal and official enactments, Demos portrays the family as a structure of roles and relationships, emphasizing those of husba...

American pirate, frontiersman, fur trapper, fur trader, hunter, and explorer Hugh Glass (1780-1833) once made his way crawling and stumbling 200 miles (320 km) to Fort Kiowa, in South Dakota, after being abandoned without supplies or weapons by fellow explorers and fur traders during General Ashley's expedition of 1823. The Revenant - Some Incidents in the Life of Hugh Glass, a Hunter of the Missouri River by Philip St. George Cooke is the key historical document supporting the re...

Louisbourg, France's impressive fortress on Cape Breton Island's foggy Atlantic coast, dominated access to the St. Lawrence and colonial New France for forty years in the mid-eighteenth century. In 1755, Great Britain and France stumbled into the French and Indian War, part of what (to Europe) became the Seven Years' War—only for British forces to suffer successive defeats. In 1758, Britain and France, as well as Indian nations caught in the rivalry, fought for high stakes: the future of c...

While the true direction of the Transpontine Series is to get to the heart of US history, this second book starts off with the 80 or so years of exploration and colonisation that led to the first attempts by the English to gain a foothold in North America. It will look at how the first (very much illegal) English bible sparked a religious protest movement that gave us separatist puritans and pilgrims. It then dives right in to the founding of James-towne, Virginia and the first uniquely Am...

A collection of 20 essays, by a distinguished panel of specialists in British and American history, that explores the complex political, economic, intellectual, religious, and social environment in which William Penn lived and worked.