The year 2000 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of A Little Commonwealth by Bancroft Prize-winning scholar John Demos. This groundbreaking study examines the family in the context of the colony founded by the Pilgrims who came over on the
In 1704 an Indian war party descended on a Massachusetts village, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. The minister was released, but his daughter chose to stay with her captors. Her extraordinary story is one of race, religion, and the conflict
Focusing on witchcraft reports and trials outside of Salem and utilizing case histories and psychological analyses, this study evaluates the incidents and trials within the context of late-seventeenth-century New England.
Longlisted for the 2014 National Book AwardThe astonishing story of a unique missionary project—and the America it embodied—from award-winning historian John Demos. Near the start of the nineteenth century, as the newly established United States look
In a lead essay that powerfully states the broad argument of the book, William Cronon writes that the environmentalist goal of wilderness preservation is conceptually and politically wrongheaded. Among the ironies and entanglements resulting from this goa
In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America's most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterlan
In a lifetime of exploration, writing, and passionate political activism, John Muir became America’s most eloquent spokesman for the mystery and majesty of the wilderness. A crucial figure in the creation of our national parks system and a far-seeing pr
The Appalachian Trail, a thin ribbon of wilderness running through the densely populated eastern United States, offers a refuge from modern society and a place apart from human ideas and institutions. But as environmental historian--and thru-hiker--Sarah
