New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America

By Colin G. Calloway

Book Overview

This text considers how from coast to coast, Native Americans created enduring cultures in America and how the subsequent European invasion remade much of the existing land and culture. It explores the new cultures that Indians and Europeans forged together in early America and considers how the journey toward this hybrid society kept Europeans and Indians closely entwined. The author analyzes how the different cultures were living, working, worshipping, travelling and trading together - as well as fearing, avoiding, despising and killing one another.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080185959X
• ISBN13: 9780801859595
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Amazingly researched and balanced

I recently graduated with my B.A. in History and am about to start my M.A. in United States History, and I have never read such a well-balanced and amply researched book, not to mention thoroughly enjoyable to read. Neither colonist nor Native American is deified nor demonized.I loved how the book was divided by subject rather than chronologically. One is able to read about everything from both peoples' interaction with the beaver population to their views on religion and politics. I highly recommend this book.

A summary of recent historiography of the American Indian.

In this book Colin Calloway sums up another cycle in the historiography of the American Indian. The book is arranged topically, and is really more a series of essays than a single narrative. Calloway is even-handed in his approach, avoiding the demonization of both settlers and Indians that have been features of other works on the same topic. Calloway tries to cut through the mythology that has encrusted much of American Indian history and get at the way things really were--cultural give and take, misunderstandings, and accomodations. Overall, an excellent book and a necessary antidote to wrong-headed notions about cultural interactions in early America.