Longstanding listener Bruce Hawkins wrote to suggest that I put together a single page with the books I have used for The History of the Americans Podcast. Some of these make great presents for the history buffs in your family!
Note that while I have read many of these cover-to-cover, in doing the podcast I read for purpose and may have only read chapters relevant to the episode I was writing. I have omitted very old books that are hard to buy, and books that I struggled with myself.
They are grouped by themes, rather than chronologically. I’ll update the list from time-to-time, and will add a section on surveys that I have read when I have a few minutes.
For some of them, I have written a nano-review.
If you buy the books (or anything else) through the links to Amazon below, I’ll get a little tip, which is much appreciated insofar as it defrays a small part of my annual expenses for the podcast.
Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (A justifiably huge bestseller, and worth the time of anybody who has reached this page!)
Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (Mann’s book on the Columbian Exchange, which updates a lot of the scholarship done in response to Albert Crosby’s coining of the term….)
Alfred W. Crosby, Jr, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Say no more.)
Early Spanish Exploration
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (The classic biography of the Admiral, no more than 80 years old. Not hagiography, and also more favorable than anything written interesting. Very serious, and beautifully written.)
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America
Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca (The most digestible of the modern accounts of Cabeza de Vaca’s amazing story.)
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez
David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas (The most recent popular history of Soto’s exploration of the SEC conference. I enjoyed it.)
Stan Hoig, Came Men on Horses: The Conquistador Expeditions of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Don Juan de Oñate (An academic book on Coronado and Oñate, but written without jargon.)
George Parker Winship, The Journey of Coronado, 1540-1542
Carrie Gibson, El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America
Early English Exploration and Settlement
John Butman and Simon Targett, New World, Inc.: The Story of the British Empire’s Most Successful Start-Up (An interesting take on the rise of the “merchant adventurers” in the Elizabethan era, who provided much of the impetus and capital for English exploration.)
Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580 (Very well written, proposing Vancouver as the location of Francis Drake’s “fair and good bay” on the west coast.)
John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake (Best modern biography of Sir Francis Drake, at least that I know of.)
Melissa Darby, Thunder Go North: The Hunt for Sir Francis Drake’s Fair & Good Bay (This is the most original of the books arguing that Drake landed on the coast of the Pacific Northwest rather than near San Francisco.)
James Horn, A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke
David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606 (This is the big book on the Roanoke colonies. It doesn’t spend much time on the “mystery” of the “Lost Colony,” but Quinn was the real giant in the field.)
Robert Hutchinson, The Spanish Armada: A History (IMHO, more “popular” than Mattingly’s book below.)
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (Loved this book, more scholarly than Hutchinson’s)
Jamestown and Virginia
James Horn, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America
James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America (Horn forcefully makes the case that Opechancanough was the same man as Don Luis de Velasco/Paquiquineo. IYKYK.)
James Horn, 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy
David Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation (A traditional history, very readable and well written. Handle with care.)
Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown (The Jamestown story written from the perspective of the Powhatans, by an anthropologist.)
Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas And The Powhatan Dilemma
Anna Brickhouse, The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco, 1560-1945
Joseph Kelly, Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin (I loved this book – raced through it. Highly recommended on the Sea Venture wreck in particular.)
Exploring and Settling New England
David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream (Fantastic on Samuel de Champlain and early New France.)
Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War (The huge bestseller.)
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation
John G. Turner, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty
William Bradford and Edmund Winslow (presumed), Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth
Nick Bunker, Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History
Edward Winslow, Good News From New England
Peter C. Mancall, The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England
New Netherland/New Sweden
Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America (The most scholarly of the histories of New Netherland.)
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (The most readable of the histories of New Netherland.)
Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland
C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655
Eric Jay Dolin, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America
D. L. Noorlander, Heaven’s Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World
Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History
Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America–The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 (Bailyn is very readable, and it contains many of the stories that we have talked about on the podcast, especially those involving brutality, war, and deprivation!)
Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut
John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul (The most accessible book on Roger Williams, IMHO. History buffs will tear through it.)
Roger Williams, A Key Into the Language of America
Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (Scholarly.)
Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Morgan’s two books got extensive treatment on the podcast – both very useful on Puritan theology.)
Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and State
Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War
Charles Orr, History of the Pequot War: The Contemporary Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent and Gardener
Eve LaPlante, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans
David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston
Malcolm Gaskill, The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World (Gaskill’s book reads like a novel. Worth your time even if you listened to our episode on “The Witches of Springfield.”)
Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut
For Cheesehead Listeners!
Patrick J. Jung, The Misunderstood Mission of Jean Nicolet: Uncovering the Story of the 1634 Journey
Maryland
Timothy B. Riordan, The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645–1646
Noeleen McIlvenna, Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640-1700
The English Civil Wars
Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689
Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel (A historical novel based on the flight of Edward Whalley and William Goffe, the “regicides” who fled to Connecticut.)
Matthew Jenkinson, Charles I’s Killers in America: The Lives & Afterlives of Edward Whalley & William Goffe (Great recent history.)
Christopher Pagluico, The Great Escape of Edward Whalley and William Goffe
Carolana/Carolina
Lindley S. Butler, A History of North Carolina in the Proprietary Era 1629-1729
Noeleen McIlvenna, A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713
Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina Under the Proprietary Government 1670-1719 (The original comprehensive history of early South Carolina, first written in 1895. Surprisingly modern.)
L. H. Roper, Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots 1662-1729
Florida
Michael Gannon (ed), The History of Florida
New Jersey
John E. Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 1609-1702: The Rebellious Proprietary
Miscellaneous (From Sidebars and interviews)
Salina B. Baker, The Line of Splendor: A Novel of Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution
Amanda Bellows, The Explorers: A New History of America in Ten Expeditions
Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Vol. 3)
David T. Beito, The New Deal’s War On the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance (A
Melanie Kirkpatrick, Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience
