Colonial Period

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....

In 1528, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong. Of the 300 men who had embarked on the journey, only four survived....

Rhodehamel examines George Washington as a public figure, arguing that the man - who first achieved fame in his early twenties - is inextricably bound to his mythic status....

The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic....

Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the "saints" (members of the Separatist Puritan congregations) and "strangers" (economic migrants) on the original ship....

Providing a thorough and expansive view of Rosicrucianism, its occult origins, and its deep imprint on America, Sora shows how this secret society still continues to exert invisible influence on the modern world....

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy's "Golden Age" - spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s - when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond....

In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history....

This classic work explains the evolution of American political thought from the Declaration of Independence to the ratification of the Constitution. In so doing, it greatly illuminates the origins of the present American political system....

Author Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in 17th-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society and attempts to answer the question why some women were vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession....

This fascinating audiobook is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time....

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals....

In The Dutch Moment, Wim Klooster shows how the Dutch built and eventually lost an Atlantic empire that stretched from the homeland in the United Provinces to the Hudson River and from Brazil and the Caribbean to the African Gold Coast....

He fought and beheaded three Turkish adversaries in duels. He was sold into slavery and then murdered his master to escape....

John Ferling peers behind the traditional image of our first president, carefully burnished by Washington himself, to show us a leader who was not only not above politics but a canny infighter....

The American Heritage History of the American Revolution details the birth of America with insight and depth....

Was America founded on the auction block in Jamestown in 1619 or aboard the Mayflower in 1620? The controversy erupted in August 2019 when the New York Times announced its 1619 Project....

Apart from The Last of the Mohicans, most Americans know little of the French and Indian War, and yet it remains one of the most fascinating periods in our history....

We have long needed a history of the founding that fully includes Black Americans in the Revolutionary protests, the war, and the debates over slavery and freedom that followed. We now have that history in Edward J. Larson's insightful synthesis of the founding....

Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men....