Log in to track your reading progress.
Overview
This updated volume of "Representative Americans" highlights three generations of colonial Americans—men and women who founded, shaped, and coined traditions of this country. This is a glimpse into a time of empire and frontier, religion, and science. The breadth of this experience is represented in the book's three sections. "Pathmarkers of the Empire" are represented in the first section. Captain John Smith and Nathaniel Bacon, though living half a century apart, were frontier soldiers shaping relations between Native and European cultures. William Bradford and William Penn came to America, also half a century apart, hoping to found a community of the righteous. In the book's second section, "Swords of Empire," the imperial, triangular contest among Britian, France, and Spain for supremacy in the New World is explored. "In the vanguard of the empire were the fortune hunters," Risjord writes. Among these "Caesars of the Forest" were Pierre Esprit Radisson and his merchant brother-in-law Medard Chouart who traversed the wilds of Canada in search of the elusive Northwest Passage. The book's final section, "Bridges of Empire," presents, among others, Cotton Mather and James Logan, who stood poised between an older order of religious humility and a newer one of political will which would later blossom into national identity.Author Biography: Norman K. Risjord is emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he taught for over three decades. He is the author of "Chesapeake Politics, 1781-1800" and "Jefferson's America, 1760-1815". He is general editor of the "American Profiles" series for Madison House.
Editorials
Booknews
Taking a biographical approach to the colonial period of American history, Risjord (University of Wisconsin-Madison) sketches fifteen figures at once sympathetic to modern readers and in some sense exemplary of their own time. These include John Smith and Pocahontas, William Bradford, Ann Hutchinson, Nathaniel Bacon, William Penn, Pierre Radisson, the LeMoyne brothers, Edward Teach, James Oglethorpe, Cotton Mather, William Byrd II, Eliza Pinckney, and James Logan. He describes their roles establishing the colonies, fighting for supremacy on the continent, shaping an American character and society, and continuing the progress of the Enlightenment. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
August 1, 2000
Publisher
Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780945612728