Showing titles in Colonial Period

Dr. John Dee and his polymath protégé Sir Francis Bacon were the most influential men in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, part of an elite group with invisible control throughout Europe. And, as Steven Sora reveals, not only were they key members of the Rosicrucians, they were the driving force behind England’s colonization of the New World and the eventual establishment of the United States. From Avalon in Newfoundland to New England to Pennsylvania and Virginia, Sora shows how Bacon and Dee’s Rosicrucian impact is felt throughout North America.

In 1631, when the Dutch tried to develop plantation agriculture in the Delaware Valley, the Lenape Indians destroyed the colony of Swanendael and killed its residents. The natives and Dutch quickly negotiated peace, avoiding an extended war through diplomacy and trade. The Lenapes preserved their political sovereignty for the next 50 years as Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and English colonists settled the Delaware Valley.

In this bold and brilliantly argued book, acclaimed author and talk-radio host Michael Medved zeroes in on 10 of the biggest fallacies that millions of Americans believe about our country - in spite of incontrovertible facts to the contrary. In The 10 Big Lies About America, Medved pinpoints the most pernicious pieces of America-bashing disinformation that pollute current debates about the economy, race, religion in politics, the Iraq war, and other contentious issues.

In 1609, two years after its English founding, colonists struggled to stay alive in a tiny fort at Jamestown. John Smith fought to keep order. When he left, desperate colonists ate lizards, rats, and human flesh. Meanwhile, the Virginia-bound Sea Venture was shipwrecked on Bermuda, the dreaded, uninhabited “Isle of Devils”. Bermuda became England’s second New World colony in 1612. A Tale of Two Colonies examines the existing sources on the colonies, sets them in a transatlantic context, and weighs them against circumstantial evidence.

From his early career as a printer and journalist to his scientific work and his role as a founder of a new republic, Benjamin Franklin has always seemed the inevitable embodiment of American ingenuity. But in his youth, he had to make his way through a harsh colonial world, where he fought many battles with his rivals, but also with his wayward emotions. Taking Franklin to the age of 41, when he made his first electrical discoveries, Bunker goes behind the legend to reveal the sources of his passion for knowledge.

In the early eighteenth century, the British and Spanish Empires were fighting for economic supremacy in the Americas. Tensions between the two powers were high, and wars blossomed like violent flowers for nearly a hundred years, from the War of Spanish Succession, culminating in the War of Jenkins' Ear. Even though it happened decades before American independence, The War of Jenkins' Ear reveals that this was truly an American war; a hard-fought, costly struggle that determined the fate of the Americas, and in which, for the first time, American armies participated.

Until surprisingly recently, most history books noted that America was discovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. The truth was that by the time that Columbus arrived in America, people had been living there for more than 12,000 years. This is the story of the gradual rise, sudden destruction, and slow recovery of the native people of North America.

At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and amid deep economic depression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile.

What was life really like for the band of adventurers who first set foot on the banks of the James River in 1607? Important as the accomplishments of these men and women were, the written records pertaining to them are scarce, ambiguous, and often conflicting, and those curious about the birthplace of the United States are left to turn to dramatic and often highly fictionalized reports.

Left unfinished at the time of his death, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin has endured as one of the most well-known and influential autobiographies ever written. From his early years in Boston and Philadelphia to the publication of his Poor Richard's Almanac to the American Revolution and beyond, Franklin's autobiography is a fascinating, personal exploration into the life of America's most interesting founding father.

In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clichés, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a path-breaking and brilliant new history of early America.

Did you know that the first English settlement in the New World was a disaster? Perhaps you have heard the story of Roanoke before. Or maybe even the creation of Jamestown. But have you heard about the Spanish colonies in North America? Or the French and Dutch settlements? Colonial America was diverse, with European settlers from various nations coming to the New World and meeting the Native Americans who already inhabited the land. What were their interactions like? Was there any semblance of peace between all of the groups who called this land their home?

Founded by James Oglethorpe on February 12, 1733, the Georgia colony was envisioned as a unique social welfare experiment. Administered by twenty-one original trustees, the Georgia Plan offered England's "worthy poor" and persecuted Christians an opportunity to achieve financial security in the New World by exporting goods produced on small farms. Most significantly, Oglethorpe and his fellow Trustees were convinced that economic vitality could not be achieved through the exploitation of enslaved Black laborers.

Douglas Brinkley takes us on the incredible journey of the United States - a nation formed from a vast countryside on whose fringes 13 small British colonies fought for their freedom, then established a democratic nation that spanned the continent and went on to become a world power. This book will be treasured by anyone interested in the story of America.

The story of the American Revolution told from the unique perspective of British Parliament and the streets of London, rather than that of the Colonies. Here, Nick Bunker explores and illuminates the dramatic chain of events that led to the outbreak of the war-revealing a tale of muddle, mistakes, and misunderstandings by men in London that led to the Boston tea party and then to the decision to send redcoats into action against the minutemen.

Carl Higbie, a former Navy SEAL and national news anchor of Carl Higbie Frontline on Newsmax TV, believes in REAL America and the need to remember the heroes who made this country great. In Profiles in Freedom, he reintroduces some of the Americans who made this great country what it is today.

In the first of the three volumes of his projected comprehensive narrative history of the role of law in America from the colonial years through the twentieth century, G. Edward White takes up the central themes of American legal history from the earliest European settlements through the Civil War.

America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nation’s pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparent - that far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts.

Bruce Lancaster starts his story with an examination of colonial society and the origins of the quarrel with England. He details the ensuing battles and military campaigns from Lexington and Concord to the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, as well as the tense political and social situation of the new nation. The American Heritage History of the American Revolution details the birth of America with insight and depth.

The new single-volume edition of Conceived in Liberty is here! After so many years of having to juggle four volumes, the Mises Institute has finally put it all together in a single book. This makes it easier to listen to and makes clearer just what a contribution this book is to the history of libertarian literature. There's never been a better time to remember the revolutionary and even libertarian roots of the American founding, and there's no better guide to what this means in the narrative of the colonial period than Murray Rothbard.