Early America

The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of...

What would you find in a time capsule of the Jamestown Colony? Perhaps a portrait of John Smith, glass beads, or skeletal remains? Listeners examine artifacts like these as they explore the history of the first permanent English settlement in North America in this Time Capsule History book.

We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startlingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans.

Denied its true place in history, the pre-Civil War black press was a forward looking, socially responsible press. Through her analysis of the content of black newspapers and magazines from the 1830s to the 1860s, Frankie Hutton not only presents a prism through which to view the social origins of black journalism in America, but also examines how this little-known ethnic press interfaced with the whole of journalism during the dark ages of the profession.

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It’s 1806. A young republic just three decades old - the United States of America - is about to make a great push westward, across the Mississippi, into a wild, beautiful, and dangerous land. A territory of towering mountains and violent waters, of icy glaciers and searing deserts. The great northwest. It is a time and a place where fortunes will be made, destinies will be revealed, and legends will rise.

Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the "saints" (members of the Separatist Puritan congregations) and "strangers" (economic migrants) on the original ship. Collectively, these people would become known to history as "the Pilgrims". The story of the Pilgrims has taken on a life of its own as one of our founding national myths - their escape from religious persecution, the dangerous transatlantic journey, that brutal first winter.

Newport Gardner's Anthem explores the remarkable life of Occramer Marycoo, an enslaved African who went on to become one of early America's most important Black leaders. In the mid-eighteenth century, Marycoo was taken from West Africa to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was forced into racial bondage and given a name that symbolized the power that his new city and new enslaver held over him: Newport Gardner. In this powerful book, Edward E. Andrews pieces together newspaper articles, church records, letters, and Gardner's own writings to tell the story of his life.

In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today. In the late 1960s, an archivist in the New York State Library made an astounding discovery...

On February 22, 1855, the Elizabeth Jennings v. Third Avenue Rail Road case was settled: The jury stunned the courtroom with a $250 verdict in Lizzie’s favor. Future president Chester A. Arthur was Jennings’ attorney, and their lives would be forever intertwined. This is the story of what happened that day. It’s also the story of Jennings and Arthur’s families, the struggle for equality, and race relations. It’s the history of America at its most despicable and exhilarating. Yet few historians know of Elizabeth Jennings or her impact on desegregating public transit.

An intellectual biography of James Madison, arguing that he invented American politics as we know it  How do you solve a problem like James Madison? The fourth president is one of the most confounding figures in early American history; his political trajectory seems almost intentionally...

Explores the unified science-religion of early humanity and the impact of Hermetic philosophy on religion and spirituality Investigates the Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus’s famous story that Seth’s descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe...

In his 2005 book, The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler described the global predicaments that would pitch the USA into political and economic turmoil in the 21st century - the end of affordable oil, climate irregularities, and flagging economic growth, to name a few. Now, he returns with a book that takes an up-close-and-personal approach to how real people are living now - surviving The Long Emergency as it happens.

American Indians remain familiar as icons, yet poorly understood as historical agents. In this ambitious book that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and eastern California (a region known as the Great Basin), Ned Blackhawk places Native peoples squarely at the center of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that profoundly shaped the American West.

Publishers Weekly’s Top Ten Fall 2024 Poetry Books From Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, a stunning collection of early works written from 1921-1927 and curated by award winning poet and National Book Award finalist, Danez Smith. Before Langston Hughes and his literary prowess became...

Although many Americans consider the establishment of the colonies as the birth of this country, in fact early America existed long before the arrival of the Europeans. From coast to coast, Native Americans had created enduring cultures, and the subsequent European invasion remade much of the land and society. In New Worlds for All, Colin G. Calloway explores the unique and vibrant new cultures that Indians and Europeans forged together in early America.

The belief that Native Americans might belong to the fabled “lost tribes of Israel” - Israelites driven from their homeland around 740 BCE - took hold among Anglo-Americans and Indigenous peoples in the United States during its first half century. In Lost Tribes Found, Matthew W. Dougherty explores what this idea can tell us about religious nationalism in early America.

The early years of English settlement in America were characterized by catastrophe: starvation, disease, extreme violence, and ruinous ignorance. Seasons of Misery offers a provocative reexamination of the British colonies' chaotic and profoundly unstable beginnings, placing crisis at the center of the story. At the outposts of a fledgling empire and disconnected from the social order of their home society, English settlers were both physically and psychologically estranged from their European identities.

In a work that fundamentally recasts the history of colonial America, Wendy Warren shows how the institution of slavery was inexorably linked with the first century of English colonization of New England. While most histories of slavery in early America confine themselves to the Southern colonies and the Caribbean, New England Bound forcefully widens the historical aperture to include the entirety of English North America.