Colonial Life

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTELLER Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize A Heather's Pick A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year One of Indigo’s Most Anticipated Books One of the CBC’s Best Canadian Fiction of 2024 A Winnipeg Free Press Best Fiction Book of 2024 From one of...

You just tried out for the school play. Who wants the lead part more than anyone? YOU! Imagine riding in horse-drawn carriages. Dining with the finest silverware. Wearing fancy clothes and powdered wigs. But be careful what you wish for. That might not be the way it was for a settler in Colonial America.…

In the vein of Sound Man and The Soundtrack of My Life, a lyrical memoir from the founder of one of the greatest music labels of all time, Island Records, about his astonishing life and career helping to bring reggae music to the world stage and working with Bob Marley, U2, Grace Jones, Cat...

“For the last hundred years, Western colonialism has had a bad name.” So began Professor Bruce Gilley’s watershed academic article, “The Case for Colonialism,” of 2017. The article sparked a global furor. Critics and defenders of Gilley’s argument battled it out in the court of public opinion. The Times of London described Gilley as “probably the academic most likely to be no-platformed in Britain.” The New York Times called him one of the “panicky white bros” who “proclaim ever more rowdily that the (white) West was, and is, best” and are “busy recyclers of Western supremacism.”

In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the ‘End of History’—that the global dominance of liberal democracy had been secured forever. Now, however, with Russia rattling its sabre on the borders of Europe and China rising to challenge the post-1945 world order, the liberal West faces major threats. These threats are not only external. Especially in the Anglosphere, the ‘decolonisation’ movement corrodes the West’s self-confidence by retelling the history of European and American colonial dominance.

Independence Lost reveals that individual motives counted as much as the ideals of liberty and freedom the Founders espoused: Independence had a personal as well as national meaning, and the choices made by people living outside the colonies were of critical importance to the war's outcome.

In this penetrating study, Carl Brasseaux looks beyond long-standing mythology to provide a critical account of early Acadian culture in Louisiana and the reasons for its survival. He convincingly dispels many received notions about the routes Acadians traveled from Nova Scotia to Louisiana, their original settlement sites, and the patterns of their subsequent migrations within the state, and closely examines the relations of Louisiana's Acadians with their black, Spanish, Indian, and Creole neighbors.

In John Adams: A Life, Ferling offers a compelling portrait of one of the giants of the Revolutionary era. Drawing on extensive research, Ferling depicts a reluctant revolutionary, a leader who was deeply troubled by the warfare that he helped to make, and a fiercely independent statesman. Bringing to life an exciting time, an age in which Adams played an important political and intellectual role. this book is a singular biography of the man who succeeded George Washington in the presidency and shepherded the fragile new nation through the most dangerous of times.

How did the colonists of Jamestown and Maryland live and die? Forensic anthropology provides an incredible array of answers. Scientists can look into a grave and determine the skeleton's gender, age at time of death, nationality, and sometimes even economic standing within minutes. Laboratory studies can provide cause of death information.

In the 18th century, Bridgetown, Barbados, was heavily populated by both enslaved and free women. Marisa J. Fuentes creates a portrait of urban Caribbean slavery in this colonial town from the perspective of these women whose stories appear only briefly in historical records. Combining fragmentary sources with interdisciplinary methodologies that include black feminist theory and critical studies of history and slavery, Dispossessed Lives demonstrates how the construction of the archive marked enslaved women's bodies, in life and in death.

From historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands comes an inspiring portrait of George Washington that examines his unrivaled leadership in the birth of America. From his early military career and role among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and...

In this, the third iteration of the author's memoir, he recounts how he came to live and raise a family on Beacon Hill. In historical asides he recounts the myriad events that shaped colonial Boston so that the city's path and his life would converge at a building on Phillips Street on the North Slope of Beacon Hill more than three centuries after the city's founding in 1630.

For over 200 years, Americans have been fascinated by the Revolutionary period and the patriots who led the growing resistance movement against British authority. In particular, the clandestine activities of Boston's Sons of Liberty in the decade before the war continue to be a source of both intrigue and mystery. The Sons of Liberty chronicles the amazing lives and careers of the four most famous members of the Sons of Liberty, examines their relationships before and during the Revolution, and analyzes their lasting legacies. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Samuel Adams, John Adams, Paul Revere and John Hancock like you never have before.

There were, Peter Thompson notes, some 150 synonyms for inebriation in common use in colonial Philadelphia and, on the eve of the Revolution, just as many licensed drinking establishments. Clearly, 18th-century Philadelphians were drawn to the tavern. In addition to the obvious lure of the liquor, taverns offered overnight accommodations, meals, and stabling for visitors. They also served as places to gossip, gamble, find work, make trades, and gather news.

Salem witchcraft will always have a magnetic pull on the American psyche. During the 1692 witch trials, more than 150 people were arrested. An estimated 25 million Americans—including author Diane Foulds—are descended from the twenty individuals executed. What happened to our ancestors? Death in Salem is the first book to take a clear-eyed look at this complex time, by examining the lives of the witch trial participants from a personal perspective.

History is recorded in many ways. According to author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten. In his completely revised and expanded edition of In Small Things Forgotten, Deetz has added new sections that more fully acknowledge the presence of women and African Americans in Colonial America.

This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden - and not always stoic - face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In this book, we encounter the awesome burdens - and the considerable power - of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising - and, all too often, mourning - her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess.

Of all the original 13 colonies in America, only one owes its conception to one man, and indeed, Pennsylvania was and still remains bound up in the life and character of its founder, William Penn. Here was a man born into a military family who saw his father rise through the ranks of the 17th-century English court to become a friend of the king, and he even considered a military career for himself, only to leave it all behind to become a member of the "Society of Friends", known colloquially as the Quakers.

John Smith is one of the most common names in the English language, but every Briton and American is familiar with the explorer and mercenary Captain John Smith, who helped found the first permanent British colony in the New World, at Jamestown, in 1607. He wrote several accounts of his exploration and his time spent in the New World, but in America, Smith is better known for his association with Pocahontas, a Native American princess. Smith credited her with saving him from being killed by the Native Americans. Retellings of the story fictitiously cast the two as lovers.

Through a granddaughter’s narrative, peek into the phenomenal triumphs that led to a “Gratitude Celebration”, a Thanksgiving tradition. The story centers on William Brewster, ancestor to many, father of the pilgrims and the nation, who perseveres through dividing issues of his era. Living in an oppressive state that deems him an outlaw, he must hide before indenturing himself to servitude. Knowing the suffering endured by the tiny fraction who lived to tell of the horrific sacrifices it took to survive in the New World, he shepherded his family onto the Mayflower.