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The Origins of America: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Colonial WorldFall 2007Children's Fiction and NonfictionElizabeth Speare, Calico Captive (1957; 2001). Inspired by Susanna Johnson's 1754 captivity narrative, this story is told through the eyes of Johnson's younger sister. Speare won Newbury Medals for her next two books, The Witch of Blackbird Pond and The Bronze Bow. Alice Dalgliesh, The Courage of Sarah Noble (1991). The true story of an 8-year-old pioneer girl who travels to western Connecticut with her father. As they strive to carve out a home in the wilderness, she meets and befriends her Indian neighbors. There are a lot of lesson plans on the Web involving this book, targeted to grades 1-3. Joseph Bruchac, The Winter People (YA novel, 2002); Marge Bruchac, Malian's Song (Picture book, 2006). These wonderful books tell the story of Rogers' Raid (1759) on the Abenaki village of Odanak from the Abenaki perspective. Sarah Masters Buckey, Enemy in the Fort. American Girl History Mysteries (2001). Set in 1754 and based on historical accounts. Joyce Hansen, The Captive (1995). This young adult novel recounts the story of an African boy sold into slavery, his middle passage to America, and experiences in Puritan Massachusetts. Patricia Wall, Child Out of Place: A Story for New England (2004). Young adult novel about an enslaved girl in Portsmouth, NH, at the turn of the 19th century. Cobblestone, "Contest for Empire: the French and Indian War," September 2005, Vol. 26, No. 6. Native AmericansColin Calloway, ed., The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America (1994). Covers the 17th and 18th centuries, organized by topics like "Voices from the Shore," "Land, Trade, and Treaties," and "American Indians and the American Revolution." Colin Calloway, ed. Dawnland Encounters: Indians and Europeans in Northern New England (1991). Denys Delage, Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 1600-40 (1993). A very interesting materialist (read Marxist) analysis of contact and exchange by a Canadian historian. Colin Calloway, ed., North Country Captives: Selected Narratives of Indian Captivity from Vermont and New Hampshire (1992). Includes Nehemiah How of Putney, VT; Phineas Stevens and Susannah Johnson of Fort Number 4, Charlestown, NH; and George Avery's journal of the Royalton Raid (1780), among others. Deerfield RaidJohn Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (1995). Explores the story of the Williams family in the broader context of English, French, and Indian interactions at the turn of the 18th century. Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield (2003). A brilliant, model example of narrative microhistory adapted to and blended in with the large-scale, comparative analysis of empires and peoples. Development of Colonial SocietyEdmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975). Though more than 30 years old, the paradigm established by this classic work remains a foundation for understanding the transition to a slave economy in the American South. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983). One strength of Cronon's book is that he treats the ecological impact of both Indians and English settlers even handedly. Another is the way he illuminates the groups differing attitudes toward the use and ownership of land. Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America (2004). Based on Dutch sources that only resurfaced and began to be comprehensively translated in the 1990s, this fascinating book makes a strong case that the relatively short-lived Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (1624 until it was swallowed up by the English in 1664) made critical contributions to the character of the nation that became America, grounded in Dutch traditions of toleration, commercial entrepreneurship, and representative government. Kenneth Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years (1970). Philip Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (1970). Two oldies but goodies. Richard Beeman, The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America (2004). Beeman presents a series of ten essays on political behavior in the 18th century that ranges from Virginia and South Carolina to Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York, from the southern backcountry and northern frontier regions to northeastern cities. Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776 (2000). An analysis of the "enormous social, economic, political, and cultural changes that created a distinctively modern and ultimately 'American' society" in the colonies between 1680 and 1770. Among them: a polyglot population, the maturation of slavery, urban complexity, integration into international market economies, new patterns of production and consumption, and religious pluralism. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Live of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (1982), and A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1990) focus on the dynamics of gender in colonial and early national society, though these books illuminate many aspects of social and cultural life. Seven Years' WarWilliam M. Fowler, Jr., Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763 (2005). This book is the most accessible and comprehensive recent history of this conflict. Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (2000) is more detailed, more ambitious, grander in scale—and more than 800 pages long. |
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