In The Virginia Adventure, Noel Hume turns his attention to the two earliest English settlements in Virginia, Roanoke and James Towne, with fascinating results. Combining information gathered through excavations of the sites with contemporary accounts from journals, letters, and official records of the period, the author illuminates the exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain John Smith, and Powhatan; the life and death of Pocahontas; and the dissapearance of the Roanoke colony.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In an elegantly written tour de force of history and archeology, Hume (Martin's Hundred) tells a dark tale of two cities. One, the earliest English colony in North America, Roanoke Island, off North Carolina, was settled briefly in 1584 by a colonizing expedition organized by Sir Walter Raleigh; a subsequent group of colonists disappeared without a trace by 1590. Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in America, founded in 1607, was plagued by greedy, feuding administrators, bad management from London, disease, starvation, the colonists' "self-defeating slothfulness," and their paralyzing fear of Indians and of one another, according to Hume, chief archeologist at Colonial Williamsburg. Enlivened by period engravings, paintings, maps, photographs of sites and artifacts, this saga of Anglo-Native American relations shattered by English arrogance and disdain is peopled with astonishing figures like British captain Samuel Argall, who kidnapped Algonquian chief Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas and held her for ransom, and sinister Spanish diplomat/spymaster Pedro de Zuniga who did his best to scuttle the English adventure. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
In his latest book since Martin's Hundred (LJ 3/15/82), Hume, chief archaeologist at Colonial Williamsburg for 35 years, brings his diverse talents to bear on the historical archaeology of the Roanoke and James Fort (later James Towne) settlements. Drawing extensively on firsthand accounts and other textual sources, he conjures up the feel of the Elizabethan experience that gave life to these settlements. His rendering of settlers and Indians is robust, often tragic, and rich in insight based on his own study of the period. Equally enthralling is his ability to move the reader back and forth in time. Hume also includes masterly and generous accounts of the history of the excavation of these sites and offers his well-informed views on where future work needs to be done. Written with wit, compassion, and tremendous attention to detail, this is historical archaeology at its best. It should appeal to a wide audience of lay readers and scholars interested in the beginning of British American culture in the New World.
Joan Gartland, Detroit P.L.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Joan Gartland, Detroit P.L.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
making history come alive,
By Jfray (Virginia) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne (Virginia Bookshelf) (Paperback)
I am not an historian and primarily bought this book because I was confused by my children's elementary school's lessons on Jamestown. Well, this book was a fascinating trip - gives great insight into the whole turn of the 17th century era as well as a "never will be found in elementary school textbooks" look at the beginnings of the US, and true aspirations and difficulties of the English adventurers. With his dry wit and acceptance of human shortcomings, Mr. Hume managed to make the journey, even when macabre and disillusioning, enjoyable. Details and difficulties of the archeology are put into the context of both the original settlers and the archeologists of the past century.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Virginia Adventure,
By Jim McCall "jhmcsb" (Solana Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne (Virginia Bookshelf) (Paperback)
One of the best resources for preparing for the forthcoming quadricentenary of the founding of Jamestowne. A must-read to learn about the genesis of our American culture and history.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent treatment of the establishment of Virginia,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne: An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey (Hardcover)
Anyone with a serious interest in colonial Virginias knows (or ought to know) about this author. I first encountered him though his earlier work on Tidewater archaeology, Martin's Hundred, which was a marvel of both scholarship and accessible writing. This subsequent work shows that wasn't just a fluke. Roanoke was the project of Sir Walter Raleigh, the first attempt in 1586 to plant an English settlement in "Virginia" (which meant the entire eastern seaboard), and it was a dismal failure for an assortment of reasons. When the supply ship, which was delayed far beyond the intended schedule, finally returned, the settlement on the swampy little island behind the barrier islands of North Carolina was completely empty, thereby creating America's first unsolved mystery. There have been many theories since, but most .likely the English settlers were dispossessed by the local Indians and either killed or carried off and absorbed. (The Indians weren't naïve about the long-range intentions of these light-skinned strangers.) But Noël Hume is an archaeologist and he's less interested in speculating about the fate of the colonists than in uncovering the traces they left behind -- of which there aren't many. However, being the chief archaeologist at Williamsburg, he's also more interested in his own back yard; Roanoke takes up less than a quarter of the book, the rest of which is given over to the establishment and survival struggles of Jamestown, the first (more or less) successful English colony, which was begun in 1607, a generation after Raleigh. It's amazing that Jamestown held on at all, given the lack of organization of those involved, their fixation on discovering gold rather than planting crops, their tendency to strut and argue among themselves, and their general lack of understanding of how to deal with the natives. And then there's Capt. John Smith, one of the greatest self-promoting blowhards America has ever produced. When Jamestown, which was very poorly situated for any purpose, was finally abandoned in favor of Williamsburg, the signs of the first settlement largely faded away, though the land continued to be planted and lived on. Subsequent generations knew where Jamestown's fort and village were, more or less, and amateur historians and plundering treasure hunters made a mess of the site, to the grief of modern archaeologists. Noël Hume leads the reader carefully through the story of the settlement's creation, pinning down his descriptions with the artifacts people have found and their interpretations, and comparing life in Jamestown with other sites in Virginia as well as with contemporary Britain. He tells the stories of Capt. Smith and Pocahontas and John Rolfe, and of all the less well-known early settlers (some of my own forebears among them), citing historical sources and sifting fact from folklore. And he does it all in an elegant, self-deprecating, and slightly cynical style that is a joy to read. The last section of the book deals with the modern rivalries among archaeologists and self-important Virginia patriots, which still continue. And the extended bibliography will keep you busy well into the future.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
