Fifty Essential Books

Welcome to my new blog!  Students interested in pursuing advanced study in early American history come to me and ask what they should read to build a foundation in the field, and so here I've compiled a list of what I consider to be the fifty titles most essential for developing your expertise.  Others would assemble a different list, to be sure, and I hope that readers will post their suggestions in the comments.  The list is in alphabetical order by author, not in any ranked order of quality or significance.

Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (2000)--This is the book for understanding what Americans call the French and Indian War, and which Winston Churchill called--quite rightly--the First World War.  Few other works on this conflict place it in a truly global context like this one, and it gives pride of place to American Indian nations as having a critical stake in the outcome of the war, following Francis Jennings (see below).

Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (2002)--Little consideration had ever been given before to the role that animal husbandry and pasturage played in colonial America apart from brief mentions in economic histories, and Anderson's book contends that hogs and cattle especially constituted the cutting edge of European colonialism in North America, and fundamentally shaped the creation of Anglo-American culture and territorial expansion, as well as the greater implications of empire that affected everybody living in the Eastern Woodlands.

James Axtell, Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (2001)--Too often histories of colonial America are Eurocentric and, more specifically, Anglocentric, in focus, with Indians appearing only as opponents in war, peripheral trading partners, or obstacles to westward expansion.  Axtell is among a generation of historians who have substantively corrected that two-dimensional interpretation to demonstrate the degrees to which "natives and newcomers" influenced each other.

Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1968)--Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History, Bailyn's study of English and Anglo-American political philosophy in the eighteenth century goes far in demonstrating colonial British-American political sophistication, and makes a case for the Revolution as a conservative defense of long-held English political beliefs.

Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (1975)--Students who want to fully grasp the still too influential idea that the history of early America is that of New England "writ large," as Jack P. Greene put it (see below) need only read this classic work.  While there are certainly elements of American identity that owes much to Puritan Calvinism, Bercovitch did not seem to think that our identity owes just as much to other European institutions, to say nothing of the heavy influence of African-American elements.

Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America, rev. ed. (2003)--This is an excellent introduction, along with Jon Butler's Awash in a Sea of Faith (see below), to the religious landscape of colonial British America.  Her discussion of religion's influence upon the American Revolution is especially valuable.

Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (1996)--A staple of colonial women's history, Brown's best known work is a powerful exploration of how masculinity, femininity, class and racial identity shaped each other in the seedbed of Anglo-America.

Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America (1995)--This list is a little short on the revolutionary period, but I have to include this one about Mary Silliman-Selleck whose biography, however it isn't one of an ordinary woman for the time, nevertheless opens a window into what everyday life was like during the Revolutionary War.

Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (1990)--Winner of the Albert J. Beveridge Award by the American Historical Association, Butler makes a powerful argument for the weakness of Christian institutions in early American history, and that people were more attached to old non-Christian beliefs and practices even as they claimed to be good Christians.

Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark (2003)--Too often early Americanist historiography presumes a continent that effectively ends at the Mississippi River, with occasional mentions of New Mexico at the time of the Pueblo Revolt, and Calloway's One Vast Winter Count goes a long way toward dispelling this.  Indian peoples are the sole focus in this book, which does not treat the trans-Appalachian West as though it was an empty space waiting for Euro-American settlement.

Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (2006)--The Proclamation of 1763 is often glossed over as an ending point in colonial America classes and the starting point in revolutionary America classes, but what the British decreed that year carried enormous implications for the Indian peoples of the trans-Appalachian West, and this is the primary focus of this work.

Joseph A. Conforti, Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America (2008)--This is an excellent brief overview of the settlement and development of New England, with an emphasis upon the powerful role religion played in the formation of regional identity.

William S. Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983)--This pioneering work in environmental history helped destroy the romantic myth of American Indians living in perfect harmony with the land by demonstrating that while Indians and English colonists had different understandings of land use and ownership, that Indians were just as capable of causing permanent damage as were Europeans, thus emphasizing Indian humanity by underscoring mutual frailties.

Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969)--This groundbreaking work answered some questions that had too long been unaddressed, and puts in proper perspective the degree to which colonial North America/the United States imported relatively small numbers of Africans compared to the West Indies and Brazil, and thus that the former depended upon natural increase in the African-American population to grow and maintain the "peculiar institution."

John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (1994)--Histories that read more like novels or mysteries are too much of a rarity in American historiography, and Demos's study of the life of Eunice Williams is an excellent example of how history, at bottom, is about people simply living their lives under circumstances both ordinary and extraordinary.

David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989)--Fischer's mammoth study of the transplantation and intertwining of the four main English cultural regions (Southern, East Anglian, Midland, and Borderland) to Massachusetts, the Chesapeake, and the cis-Appalachian backcountry suffers from a certain degree of reductionism, but that does little to compromise its value to understanding how those particular regions of the Atlantic Seaboard developed culturally.

Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (1993)--The African-American experience during the Revolution is put front-and-center in this fantastic book, highlighting the ambivalence with which slaves and free blacks faced the Revolution and contended forcefully with its egalitarian and libertarian rhetoric.  A beautiful extension of the groundbreaking work by Benjamin Quarles.

Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (1988)--This work successfully challenged the then-dominant interpretation that New England was the seedbed of American culture, and that the true roots of the American "system" lay in the southern colonies, which suffered--still suffers, some would argue--from scholarly neglect as a consequence of the Civil War.

Philip Greven, Four Generations: Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (1970)--Greven's groundbreaking foray into microhistory is a perfect example of how understanding local history can inform understandings of regional history, in this case of New England.

Ramon A. Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (1991)--A classic of colonial New Mexican history, this study shows how religion was used by the Spanish to subjugate the Indian nations of the region, part of which involved the effort to breed Indian identity out of Spanish America.

David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (1989)--Religion's influence on the formation of New England identity is a well-traveled subject, but Hall's work focuses more on such subjects as occultism, folk religion, and apocalypticism as integral to New Englanders' everyday lives.  The culminating character sketch of Samuel Sewell is particularly revealing.

Richard Hofstadter, America at 1750: A Social Portrait (1972)--Richard Hofstadter had only just begun this project when he died unexpectedly, and so this was compiled from that draft, along with some of his unpublished writings and lecture notes, by his wife, and despite its feeling unfinished and thus underdeveloped, it is nevertheless a great overview of the year 1750 in British America.  I often assign this in courses on the American Revolution as a first reading to bring students up to speed.

Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (1999)--Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History, Isaac's study of eighteenth-century Virginia was groundbreaking in its interdisciplinary, "dramaturgical" approach, showing how geography, culture, politics, and society all influence one another.

Francis P. Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies & Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (1988)--A brilliant example of activist scholarship, Jennings takes his fellow historians to task for discussing the French and Indian War without treating the American Indian nations as nations with much at stake in what Fred Anderson called "the war that made America."

Jane Kamensky, Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England (1999)--This work introduces students to the power of words in ways that are both fascinating and challenging.  The degree to which society determines what one can and cannot say has been heavily studied only in connection to the First Amendment, but how religion, patriarchy, and class restricted speech in the early colonial period was not much considered before Kamensky's book came out.  Especially illuminating is her analysis of slander and libel cases in New England's overly litigious society.

Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelicalism in Colonial America (2007)--There are few synthetic histories of the First Great Awakening, and while this one is written from a decidedly pro-Christian, pro-evangelical viewpoint, and I disagree with Kidd's argument that evangelical Protestantism forms the basis of American identity, he does offer an excellent overview of the major figures and dynamics of the Awakening.

Sung Bok Kim, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York: Manorial Society, 1664-1775 (1978)--Why this book is out of print is a mystery to me, seeing as how every historian who analyzes colonial New York history cites it as a key work for understanding the intricacies of social, political, and economic relationships along the Hudson Valley in the wake of the English conquest of New Netherland.

Hugh T. Lefler and William S. Powell, Colonial North Carolina: A History (1973)--Histories of the colonial South focus too much upon Virginia and South Carolina, and while my home state of North Carolina was a little slower in developing in the first two decades of the eighteenth century, its divergence from its parent colonies to the north and south after 1720 is well worth studying.

James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (1976)--This is a classic work in regional history, as well as the beginnings of Pennsylvania that focuses on the ways in which landscape and climate shape historical progression and societal development.  The Palatine German migration to the area in the early 1700s gets more attention here than it had in the past, enhancing this book's value. 

Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, rev. ed. (2007)--The inaugural volume in the Oxford History of the United States in 1982, this is the best synthetic treatment of the Revolution in its political, social, economic, and military facets.

Brendan McConville, The Kings Three Faces: The Rise & Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (2006)--McConville makes a compelling case for colonial Americans' affectionate attachment to the British institution of constitutional monarchy, and particularly the figure of King George III, and thus that the American Revolution was undertaken with great reluctance until the colonists realized that George III was no longer their champion and protector.

John J. McCusker and Russell Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (1987)--This is the foundational text for understanding the economies of colonial and revolutionary America, especially for comprehending currency valuations and means of exchange.  It also has great tables on colonial and regional population figures.

Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 (1968)--Maier's argument that the American people's disenchantment with being part of the British Empire, and their disaffection for King George III and the idea of constitutional monarchy was a painful, gradual process, was not necessarily a new one when it was published, but it is among the best articulated versions of it.  Her influence is readily seen in McConville's The King's Three Faces (see above).  The Neo-Whigs of the 1950s and '60s tended to downplay the great reluctance of the proto-revolutionaries to push for separation and independence, and Maier does much to emphasize how easily the Revolution could have been stillborn in the Continental Congress.

Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997)--I list this title more out of sentiment than anything else, as I had the great pleasure to meet the late Prof. Maier when I was a doctoral student in 1999.  She was giving the annual Fossick Lecture at SUNY-Albany, and at the subsequent reception I got to have a very nice extended conversation with her.  She graciously autographed my paperback copy, in which she predicted that I would "have a distinguished career in history."  Nevertheless, this is an excellent study of one of the most puzzled over and misunderstood texts in all of early America, and provides ample fodder for student discussions of the Declaration, from the early drafts to the final one signed by Congress.

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975)--Winner of the Albert J. Beveridge Award by the American Historical Association, this book radically altered the way we understand the early development of slavery in America, tackling the chicken-and-egg question of racism and slavery in America, suggesting an answer while leaving it open enough for vigorous debate.

Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727-1795 (1962)--This list is rather short on biographies, but this one is a must-read for the emerging Early Americanist.  Through Morgan's sympathetic treatment, the reader still gets a beautiful portrait of eighteenth-century New England, including the two most important events to sweep the region: the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution.

Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (1999)--Also a recipient of the Beveridge Award, this work has become the volume for understanding the development of slavery and African-American culture in the South.  Whereas too many studies of slavery did little to explain the differences in the way that slavery was thought of and practiced in the Chesapeake and Lowcountry regions, this work forcefully highlights those differences in terms of how they fundamentally shaped African-American identity.

Richard Cullen Rath, How Early America Sounded (2005)--Specialists in a particular period and place imagine what it was like to be there, to experience that sensory world.  Too often our studies of times and places is undertaken in silence--not of the world around us, but of the world in which our subjects lived. Rath makes an effort to let us hear the soundscapes of early America, and we gain a new appreciation for the significance of sounds both familiar and strange to us.

Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (1992)--The Iroquois League was indisputably the most powerful grouping of Indian tribes in eastern North America, and Richter's study establishes this fact and the ways in which the Iroquois worked to take from European colonialism the best advantages that could be had to enlarge their power and influence in the Eastern Woodlands.

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (2003)--A much needed correction to Eurocentric narratives of early America that always run from east to west, Facing East suggests an alternative vision that puts Indians at the center of colonial American history, establishing their critical roles in American development.  His innovative use of interpretative reconstruction remains controversial, given the lack of primary source materials from a Native viewpoint, but provides ample fodder for debate.

Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (1982)--Along with the works of Colin Calloway, Francis Jennings, Daniel K. Richter, Salisbury's Manitou and Providence highlights the degree to which cooperation between natives and newcomers, rather than just conflict, was key to the success of European colonialism in North America.  While discussing English attitudes toward the Indians, it also emphasizes the ways the Southern Algonquians thought about the English--each side's prejudices shaped by their respective worldviews.

John Howard Smith, The First Great Awakening: Redefining Religion in British America, 1725-1775 (2015)--Of course I'm going to put this on my list, but I think that it truly is the best synthetic history of the Awakening that does not take for granted that Christianity is the only one true religion, and also gives African Americans, American Indians, and women greater prominence in the revivals.  Also, it highlights contributions made by sects such as the Moravians, who heretofore have not figured in any histories of the Awakening.

Alan Taylor, American Colonies (2001)--Another winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History, this makes an excellent first book to read when stepping into the deep waters of early American history, not least for the fact that it tackles all of North America, rather than focusing only upon the British colonies.

Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (2010)--Did he leave anybody out?  No, and that is what makes this the standard history of a conflict that gets far too little analysis.  Following historians who interpret the American War for Independence as a civil war, Taylor proves that the War of 1812 was no less a civil war--one that nearly tore the United States apart, but otherwise in victory confirmed American independence.

Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682-1763 (1948)--Until the publication of this book, most of what academics studied about Quakers was their theology and nineteenth-century commitments to social/moral reform.  Tolles shows us that Philadelphia's Quakers consciously walked away from many of their religious principles in the wake of material success and political empowerment in the eighteenth century, setting the stage for an internal reformation at the time of the Seven Years' War.

Barbara Tuchman, The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution (1986)--This was the first history of the Revolution that I had ever read, and it remains one of the best short studies.  Her thesis that the War for Independence was lost through British vacillation and incompetence rather than won by the Continental Army, with substantial help from the French navy, was not widely well received, but it is nonetheless spot-on.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1990)--Winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for History, this is a masterpiece of social microhistory that takes the life of an ordinary woman living and working on the Maine frontier to illuminate women's experiences in the final decades of the "long" eighteenth century.

Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969)--There simply is no better political analysis of the American Revolution, particularly with regard to the intricacies of the Constitutional Convention and the process of ratification of the Constitution.

Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991)--Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History, Wood's argument for the innate radicalism of the Revolution was controversial, but no less convincing in spite of critical flaws in his support of the argument.

Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1966)--In spite of its antiquated subtitle, Black Majority is a classic of early New Left scholarship that underscores the role African Americans played in the early history of South Carolina, culminating in the ill-fated Stono Rebellion of 1739.

John Howard Smith