Colonial America

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Alexander Hamilton is a 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton, written by Ron Chernow. Beginning with Hamilton’s birth in the Caribbean, the book traces Hamilton’s story from his childhood, to his early years in America, to his rise as one of the most admired—and reviled—politicians and statesmen that the country would ever see. The popular music Hamilton is based on the story told in Chernow’s book, and shows the development of both America, and one of its... Read Alexander Hamilton Summary

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American Colonies: The Settling of North America is the first volume of the five-part Penguin History of the United States series. In it, Pulitzer-prize-winning historian Alan Taylor surveys the history of the Americas before the formation of the United States. Other work by this author includes the American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804.Taylor aims to expand, enrich, and complicate our understanding of this period. American Colonies covers a broader temporal and geographical range than most... Read American Colonies Summary

American Creation is a 2007 nonfiction book by Joseph Ellis that covers the successes and failures of the founders of the United States from 1775 to 1803. Ellis starts with the year and three months that set in motion the colonies’ declaration of independence and subsequent revolution. In this eventful year, the British played the worst possible hand they could, removing the possibility of reconciliation. The colonists included fiery and impetuous rebels such as Patrick... Read American Creation Summary

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An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People is a 2019 adaptation of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s 2015 nonfiction book. Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese adapted the material for middle-grade audiences. The original publication received the American Book Award, and this version is a 2020 American Indian Youth Literature Young Adult Honor Book with recognition from the National Council for the Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council. This book tells the perspective of... Read An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People Summary

Ashes (2016), a young adult historical novel by American author Laurie Halse Anderson, is the third and final book in the Seeds of America series. This guide refers to the 2016 Atheneum eBook edition.Plot SummaryIsabel Gardener and Curzon Smith, two black teenagers who escaped slavery during the American Revolution, have been on the run together for five years. After serving at Valley Forge, they’re travelling through the Eastern states, looking for Isabel’s little sister Ruth... Read Ashes Summary

Elisa Carbone’s 2006 historical novel, Blood on the River: James Town 1607, introduces the reader to Samuel Collier, a 12-year-old boy. The reader meets Samuel in London and accompanies him on his voyage to the New World as he makes his way to the first permanent English settlement in North America as servant boy to Captain John Smith.Plot SummaryThe novel begins on the streets of London, where Samuel, an orphan, is trying to survive in... Read Blood on the River Summary

Caleb’s Crossing (2011) is a historical fiction novel based on the real life figure of Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard University in 1665. Born into the Wampanoag tribe on an island near Cape Cod, the historical Cheeshahteaumuck converted to Christianity and attended a preparatory school before enrolling in Harvard. In her novel, Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks tells a fictionalized version of Caleb’s story in the form of a... Read Caleb's Crossing Summary

William Cronon wrote a scholarly assessment of the ecological changes in the land wrought by the arrival of New England’s European settlers from about 1620 to 1800 called Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983). Cronon examines both the Native American and European land usage during the pre-colonial time period, including farming, hunting, fishing, and the commercial harvesting of the fruits of the land. In particular, Cronon explores the... Read Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England Summary

Set during Philadelphia’s yellow fever outbreak, Fever 1793 is a young adult, historical fiction novel written by Laurie Halse Anderson and first published in 2000. Anderson is a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her contribution to young adult literature, and Fever 1793 is an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and a New York Public Library Best Book for Teens. Other works by Anderson include Chains (2008), Wintergirls (2009), and... Read Fever 1793 Summary

Forge tells the story of Curzon Smith, a runaway slave who enlists in the Colonial Army during the American Revolution. A sequel to Anderson’s previous book,Chains, Forge begins in earnest after Curzon has been abandoned by Isabel, a fellow slave who has freed him from captivity at the end of the previous novel. Isabel has left in search of her lost sister, Ruth – an action Curzon has tried to prevent in order to keep... Read Forge Summary

Published in 2004, Cokie Roberts’s Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation is a non-fiction, historical study of the role women played in establishing the United States as an independent nation. This study guide refers to the first edition of the text, published by William Morrow-HarperCollins in 2004.  In her introduction, Roberts recalls her childhood delight at hearing tales of her ancestor William Claiborne, who met the Founding Fathers. However, she recognizes that she... Read Founding Mothers Summary

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Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and The Start of a New Nation (2003) is a narrative history of the English’s founding of Jamestown in 1606 written by David A. Price. Price is a journalist for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other American publications. In his retelling of the story, Price seeks to puncture some of the romantic mythology surrounding the relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas, while placing their... Read Love and Hate in Jamestown Summary

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Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life (2012) is the fifth work by American writer, critic, and anthropologist David Treuer, and his first work of non-fiction. Treuer would follow this work, seven years later, with the publication of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present (2019), an in-depth study of Indigenous history and reservation life. Many of the historical events and themes that Treuer covers in this book are... Read Rez Life Summary

After failing to establish a career as a lawyer, Washington Irving (1783-1859) turned to writing. Distancing himself from British literature, Irving sought to create a wholly American folktale for American readers, sprinkled with American geography, mores, and folklore. His first attempt, “Rip Van Winkle,” is one of the earliest examples of the short story in Western literature. Published in 1819 in Irving’s short story collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (which also features... Read Rip Van Winkle Summary

Lawrence Hill’s novel Someone Knows My Name was first published in Canada in 2007 under the title The Book of Negroes. This work of historical fiction was published with its new title in the United States in 2008. The novel won the 2007 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.Inspired by the historical document the “Book of Negroes,” a record of escaped African slaves who found freedom in Canada, Hill set... Read Someone Knows My Name Summary

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The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation, originally published in 2003 by Oxford University Press, is a popular history book by American cultural historian Jim Cullen. As an overview and critical analysis of the American Dream, this book adds some meat to the bones of a traditionally ambiguous concept. Cullen maintains an optimistic outlook about the usefulness of the various American Dreams and about the promise of America, despite... Read The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation Summary

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The Crucible is a Tony Award-winning play by Arthur Miller. The play is a partially fictionalized dramatization of the Salem witch trials, which took place from February 1692 to May 1693. Premiering in 1953 at the height of the McCarthy trials, Miller wrote The Crucible as an allegory for the paranoia, fear-mongering accusations, and circumstantial evidence he witnessed. Accused of being a communist himself, Miller faced questioning by the House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American... Read The Crucible Summary

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The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (First Mariners Books edition 2017) by Andrés Reséndez, a Mexican historian working at the University of California Davis, won the 2017 Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. In this book, Reséndez dispels the myth that only African slaves faced enslavement in the Americas. He focuses on Indigenous slaves in the Caribbean, central and northern Mexico, and the American Southwest... Read The Other Slavery Summary

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The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 novel by writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The work, Hawthorne’s first full-length novel, is a classic of the American Romantic era. More specifically, its treatment of topics like sin, insanity, and the occult make it a work of Dark Romanticism—a movement related to the Gothic genre that includes works by Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville. The Scarlet Letter is also a piece of historical fiction; it is set in the... Read The Scarlet Letter Summary

“The Wives of the Dead,” a short story published in 1832 by American dark-romantic author Nathaniel Hawthorne, tells of sisters-in-law in colonial Massachusetts whose husbands die at the same time and details their attempts to help each other cope with the loss. The eerily surreal story touches on several of Hawthorne’s literary obsessions, including Gothic horror, Puritan guilt, love and devotion, Early American history, and feminism. The story later appeared in an 1851 collection, The... Read The Wives of the Dead Summary

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