A Land as God Made It
Jamestown and the Birth of America
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The definitive history of the Jamestown colony, the crucible of American history
“An absolutely terrific book.” —New York Times
In this beautiful, vividly told story, James Horn describes the beginnings of England’s first successful colony in America, persuasively demonstrating that Jamestown was the first great crucible of American history.
A Land As God Made It describes the unimaginable hardships endured by early colonists in their efforts to establish a settlement, their search for gold mines and a massage to the East, and their hopes of finding fabulously wealthy Indian civilizations. It details the dramatic exploits of Captain John Smith and his relationship with the Powhatans, and explores the tragic consequences of English attempts to convert Indian peoples to Christianity. With unparalleled knowledge of Jamestown’s early history, James Horn has written a gripping account of the colony that gave rise to America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Horn, who heads the library at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, offers a history that will put Plymouth in its place. Not only was Jamestown settled before Plymouth, in 1607, but, says Horn, it was the seedbed of many themes, both glorious (representative government) and tragic (imperialism), that run through American history. In this detailed narrative of Jamestown's first 18 years, Horn focuses primarily on the relationship between the English settlers and the Native Americans. (He gives disappointingly scant attention to the first Africans' arrival in 1619.) Jamestown was the first English colony in North America to succeed; that success was "disastrous" for the Indians. The town leader John Smith figures prominently in Horn's tale. Smith's own written recollection of his captivity by Indians is the source for the well-known story that a young Pocahontas saved his life; Horn dismisses Smith's account as implausibly exaggerated. In Horn's view, a pivotal point in Indian-Anglo relations was the Powhatan uprising of 1622. Any hope that the English might partner with the Indians against Spain and treat them with kindness or justice was killed thereafter, the settlers were determined to exclude the Indians from their new commonwealth. 12 b&w illus., 6 maps.
