Table of Contents

Foreword, by Christopher Clark
Introduction
PART I. BODIES AND MINDS
1. The Voyage In
2. Blood and Soil
3. Germ Colonies
4. 4. Martyrs to Venus
5. Sex and the City
PART II. SOULS
6. In a Strange Way
7. Crucibles
8. A Seeking People
9. Midnight Ramblers
10. Worlds within Words
PART III. EMPIRE
11. The Virginians
12. Devil in a Blue Dress
13. The Bad Birds
14. The Forgotten War
15. Power Shopping
PART IV. FOUNDERS
16. For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
17. The Good Father
18. The Founding Swindlers
19. Pluribus
20. Clintonism
PART V. HISTORIANS
21. The Exceptionalist
22. Poor Richard, Rich Ben
23. Threads of History
24. Transformer
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

How is American history written? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alan Taylor answers this question in this collection of his essays from The New Republic, where he explores the writing of early American history.

About the Author

Alan Taylor is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and a contributing editor for The New Republic. He is the author of several books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Cooper's Town and most recently American Colonies.

Reviews

"Trained in the new social history, Taylor is especially attuned to diversity and conflict in early American society... Writing Early American History is a provocative and very well written collection."--History "Taylor is not only a trenchant critic; he is a skilled and able practitioner, surely one of the best of the current generation of historians."--New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century "Taylor is the leading historian of early America... This collection reprints his often quite lengthy review articles ... in a thematically organized anthology. It is an absolute joy to dip into and will confirm Taylor's reputation as a historians' historian."--Journal of American Studies