American Colonies

In the first volume in the Penguin History of the United States series, edited by Eric Foner, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America, from the native inhabitants from millennia past through the decades of Western colonization and conquest and across the entire continent, all the way to the Pacific coast.

In a grand-scale narrative history, the bestselling author of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize now captures the decades when capitalism was at its most unbridled and a few breathtakingly wealthy businessmen utterly transformed America from an agrarian economy to a world power. The years...

Why did the Pilgrims and other settlers come to North America? How did American Indians react to white settlers on their land? How was North America changed by the colonists? The colonization of the New World led to major changes for both European colonists and the native peoples who already lived there. Using an inquiry-based approach, listeners will learn all about the historic changes that took place in the land and various people's lives at the beginning of Colonial America.

Over the last generation, historians have broadened our understanding of colonial America by adopting both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-continental perspective, examining the interplay of Europe, Africa, and the Americas through the flow of goods, people, plants, animals, capital, and ideas. In this Very Short Introduction, Alan Taylor presents an engaging overview of the best of this new scholarship.  

In the shadows of Salem Village in 1692, one young girl must navigate the complexities of a divided society. Often cold and hungry, eight-year-old Verity Manton, an orphaned ragpicker, clings to the scraps of love and kindness in her harsh world. Things get tangled as the village Puritans' strange behavior grows more alarming. Verity is caught between the safety of her life and the promise of a better future with a Quaker family who reaches out to her. Yet, she has been warned her whole life that Quakers are evil. Will Verity have the courage to trust her heart and choose a path that defies...

Four centuries ago, an entire colony vanished. Only one word remained, carved into a tree: CROATOAN. When a desperate mentor arrives at Jude Carrick and Miri Kovács’ Charleston office with whispers of her missing protégé, the investigators of impossible legends are drawn into America’s oldest unsolved mystery. Their search carries them from coastal ruins to swamp-choked chambers, where spirals carved in stone whisper warnings that are more than echoes. The deeper they follow Daniel Harker’s trail, the more they uncover a truth the world was never meant to hear: the colonists did ...

Life has dealt him an unfair hand, leaving him with few options. Will a chance encounter with a caring American colonial family provide a poor English boy with a stable home, or will the boy be lost in events that are spiraling out of control? Peter Smith, a boy of humble beginnings, is a testament to the human spirit. Despite his impoverished upbringing, abduction, and mistreatment, he refuses to be defined by his circumstances. Born into poverty and hopelessness on the streets of Portsmouth, England, Peter is forced into a life of crime just to survive. His resilience is tested when he is...

J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Originally published as a section of the author’s larger “Conversations in Early American History: 1492-1763,” this Kindle edition, equivalent in length to a physical book of approximately 60 pages, clearly explains, in easy-to-follow question-and-answer format, the key events of American history from Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World (1492) to the signing of the treaty that ended the French and Indian War (1763). CONTENTS 1. Christopher Columbus 2. Jamestown 3. The House of Burgesses 4. The Pilgrims 5. Bacon’s Rebellion 6. The Salem Witch Trials 7. The Thirteen ...

More than half of American adults and more than 75 percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. American Cosmic examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system that is changing and even supplanting traditional religions.

The setting for this haunting and encyclopedically researched work of history is colonial Massachusetts, where English Puritans first endeavored to "civilize" a "savage" native populace. There, in February 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband.

Said to cure almost any illness, the new street drug Glow has attained almost mythical status in America. The key ingredient in Glow is the Living Blood, which courses through the veins of 17-year-old Washington state resident Fana Wolde. Distrustful of her parents and eager to share her healing powers via an elaborate underground network, Fana sets out on her own. But what she doesn't know is she's being hunted by a mysterious and homicidal group with ties to the Vatican.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom—and almost got away with it In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine...

From moldy food and dirt covered clothes to poisonous pests and extreme weather, American colonists had a dreadful time in the New World. Get ready to explore the nasty side of life in the 13 American Colonies.

It was a war that would change America—forever. But for those caught in between, it was a battle for their land—and their survival... At the dawn of the 18th century, while the French and English are locked in a battle for the northeast territory, the ancient Indian tribes begin a savage brother-against-brother conflict—forced to take sides in the white man’s war—pushed into an era of great heroism and greater loss. In the tradition of The Last of the Mohicans, the First Frontier Series is a stunningly realistic adventure saga set on America’s earliest battleground. BOOK THREE ...

A French Officer in the American Revolution is the thrilling story of a dashing and courageous French soldier who joined the Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington to fight in the American Revolutionary War. It is based on meticulous research and the journals of François-Louis de Ménonville, written by his direct descendant as if it was told by the soldier himself, with extensive footnotes for those interested in learning more. It describes not only his adventures in battle and comments on military strategy but his thoughts on George Washington, Lafayette, and other major figures.

Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the "wolf" in our backyards and its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse.

In 1620, separatists from the Church of England set sail across the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Understanding themselves as spiritual pilgrims, they left to preserve their liberty to worship God in accordance with their understanding of the Bible. There exists, however, an alternative, more dispiriting version of their story. In it, the Pilgrims are religious zealots who persecuted dissenters and decimated the Native peoples through warfare and by stealing their land. The Pilgrims' definition of liberty was, in practice, very narrow.

Lawrence of Arabia meets Sebastian Junger's War in this unique, incendiary, and dramatic true story of heroism and heartbreak in Afghanistan written by a Pulitzer Prize–nominated war correspondent. Army Special Forces Major Jim Gant changed the face of America’s war effort in Afghanistan. A...