Between two worlds: how the English became Americans

Description

"In Between two worlds, historian Malcolm Gaskill tells the sweeping story of the English experience in America during the first century of colonization. Following a large and varied cast of visionaries and heretics, merchants and warriors, and slaves and rebels, Gaskill illuminates the often traumatic challenges the settlers faced. The first waves sought to re-create the English way of life, even to recover a society that was vanishing at home. But they were thwarted at every turn by the perils of a strange continent, unaided by monarchs who first ignored and then exploited them. As these colonists strove to leave their mark on the New World, they were forced -- by hardship and hunger, by illness and infighting, and by bloody and desperate battles with Indians -- to innovate and adapt, or perish. As later generations acclimated to the wilderness, they recognized that they had evolved into something distinct: no longer just English in America, they were perhaps not even English at all"-- Planters, 1607-1640. Brave heroic minds -- Earth's only paradise -- Each man shall have his share -- The vast and furious ocean -- Full of wild beasts and wild men -- Projects of no fantasy -- To clearer light and more liberty -- In darkness and the shadow of death -- Saints, 1640-1675. The distracted condition of my dear native soil -- Marching manfully on -- Devouring caterpillars and gnawing worms -- A heap of troubles and confusion -- How is your beauty become ashes? -- Remembrance of an exile in a remote wilderness -- The day of trouble is near -- Warriors, 1675-1692. Exquisite torments and most inhumane barbarities -- A people bred up in this country -- Being a constitution within themselves -- Strange creatures in America -- These dark territories -- Epilogue : new worlds.