The Brave New World covers the span of early American history, from 30,000 years before Europeans ever landed on North American shores to creation of the new nation. With its exploration of the places and peoples of early America, this comprehensive, lively narrative brings together the most recent scholarship on the colonial and revolutionary eras, Native Americans, slavery, politics, war, and the daily lives of ordinary people. The revised, enlarged edition includes a new chapter carrying the story through the American Revolution, the War for Independence, and the creation of the Confederation. Additional material on the frontier, the Southwest and the Caribbean, the slave trade, religion, science and technology, and ecology broadens the text, and maps drawn especially for this edition will enable readers to follow the story more closely. The bibliographical essay, one of the most admired features of the first edition, has been expanded and brought up to date.
Peter Charles Hoffer combines the Atlantic Rim scholarship with a Continental perspective, illuminating early America from all angles—from its first settlers to the Spanish Century, from African slavery to the Salem witchcraft cases, from prayer and drinking practices to the development of complex economies, from the colonies' fight for freedom to an infant nation's struggle for political and economic legitimacy. Wide-ranging in scope, inclusive in content, the revised edition of The Brave New World continues to provide professors, students, and historians with an engaging and accessible history of early North America.
—1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries
Table of Contents:
Preface
Part I: Worlds in Motion
1. The First Americans
2. Europe in the Age of Discovery, 1400–1500
3. The Spanish Century, 1492–1588
4. Rivals for the Northland: England and France in America
5. The Planter Colonies
6. A New England
7. The Middle Colonies
8. The Critical Years, 1675–1700
Part II: From Provinces of Empire to a New Nation
9. The Empires Reinvented, 1660–1763
10. Provincial People and Places in the Eighteenth Century
11. Common Pastimes and Elite Pursuits
12. Mercantilism and Markets
13. The Last War and the Lost Peace, 1754–1763
14. A Nation in the Womb of Time, 1764–1775
15. Independence, War, and Republicanism, 1776–1783
Epilogue: The Way Ahead
Bibliographic Essay
Index
About the Author :
Peter Charles Hoffer is a distinguished research professor of history at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Sensory Worlds in Early America, Law and People in Colonial America, John Quincy Adams and the Gag Rule, 1835–1850, and The Devil's Disciples: The Makers of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, all three published by Johns Hopkins.
Review :
Instructors of courses in colonial America should consider this thorough textbook . . . Hoffer does a remarkable job.
—Daniel P. Kotzin, Teaching History
Life in the New World was as difficult and varied as one can imagine. Peter Charles Hoffer presents a comprehensive picture of that life from many diverse perspectives in his book. He takes us beyond the usual U.S. History course treatment of the topic of colonial America, and allows us to see it in a realistic setting. This is a valuable book for historians of any specialty.
—Mary G. Saracino, World History Connected
