Between two worlds : how the English became Americans
Publication Information
New York : Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, [2014]
Physical Description
xxiii, 484 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Summary
"In Between two worlds, historian Malcolm Gaskill tells the sweeping story of the English experience in America during the first century of colonization. Following a large and varied cast of visionaries and heretics, merchants and warriors, and slaves and rebels, Gaskill illuminates the often traumatic challenges the settlers faced. The first waves sought to re-create the English way of life, even to recover a society that was vanishing at home. But they were thwarted at every turn by the perils of a strange continent, unaided by monarchs who first ignored and then exploited them. As these colonists strove to leave their mark on the New World, they were forced -- by hardship and hunger, by illness and infighting, and by bloody and desperate battles with Indians -- to innovate and adapt, or perish. As later generations acclimated to the wilderness, they recognized that they had evolved into something distinct: no longer just English in America, they were perhaps not even English at all"--Publisher's description.
Contents
- Planters, 1607-1640. Brave heroic minds ; Earth's only paradise ; Each man shall have his share ; The vast and furious ocean ; Full of wild beasts and wild men ; Projects of no fantasy ; To clearer light and more liberty ; In darkness and the shadow of death
- Saints, 1640-1675. The distracted condition of my dear native soil ; Marching manfully on ; Devouring caterpillars and gnawing worms ; A heap of troubles and confusion ; How is your beauty become ashes? ; Remembrance of an exile in a remote wilderness ; The day of trouble is near
- Warriors, 1675-1692. Exquisite torments and most inhumane barbarities ; A people bred up in this country ; Being a constitution within themselves ; Strange creatures in America ; These dark territories ; Epilogue : new worlds.