America's Forgotten Colony examines private US citizens' experiences on Cuba's Isle of Pines to show how American influence adapted and endured in republican-era Cuba (1902–58). This transnational study challenges the notion that US territorial ambitions waned after the nineteenth century. Many Americans, anxious about a 'closed' frontier in an industrialized, urbanized United States, migrated to the Isle and pushed for agrarian-oriented landed expansion well into the twentieth century. Their efforts were stymied by Cuban resistance and reluctant US policymakers. After decades of tension, however, a new generation of Americans collaborated with locals in commercial and institutional endeavors. Although they did not wield the same influence, Americans nevertheless maintained a significant footprint. The story of this cooperation upsets prevailing conceptions of US domination and perpetual conflict, revealing that US-Cuban relations at the grassroots were not nearly as adversarial as on the diplomatic level at the dawn of the Cuban Revolution.

Analysis of the American presence on the Isle of Pines illustrates how US influence adapted and endured in republican-era Cuba.

This is what we all learned in school: Pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. They had a rough start, but ultimately made a go of it, made friends with the Indians, and celebrated with a big Thanksgiving dinner. Other uptight religious Puritans followed them and the whole place became New England. There were some Dutch down in New York, and sooner or later William Penn and the Quakers came to build the City of Brotherly Love in Pennsylvania, and finally it was 1776 and time to revolt against King George III and become America. That’s it. That’s the narrative of American colonial history known to one and all. Yet there are 150 years – six or seven generations between Plymouth Plantation and the 1770s – that are virtually unknown in our national consciousness and unaccounted for in our American narrative. Who, what, when, where and why people were motivated to make a two-month crossing on the North Atlantic to carve a life in a largely uncharted, inhospitable wilderness? How and why did they build the varied societies that they did here in the New World colonies? How and why did we become America? America’s Forgotten Colonial History tells that story.

“Introduces us to extraordinary men and women and landmark events that shaped the American character and the future of the nation.” —Thomas J. Craughwell, author of Failures of the Presidents and Stealing Lincoln’s Body Today Americans remember 1776 as the beginning of an era. A nation was born, commencing a story that continues to this day. But the War of Independence also marked the end of another era—one in which many nations, Native American and European, had struggled for control of a vast and formidable wilderness. This book returns to that long-ago age in which the clash between America’s first peoples and the newcomers from Europe was still new. Author Cormac O’Brien’s masterful storytelling reveals how actors as diverse as Spanish conquistadores, Puritan ministers, Amerindian sachems, mercenary soldiers, and ordinary farmers traded and clashed across a landscape of constant, often violent, change—and how these dramatic moments helped to shape the world around us. From the founding of the first permanent European settlement in North America (1565) to the bloody chaos of the British frontier in Pontiac’s War (1763), this vividly written narrative spans the two centuries of American history before the Revolutionary War. These lesser-known conflicts of the past are brought brilliantly to life, showing us a world of heroism, brutality, and tenacity—and also showing us how deep the roots of our own time truly run. Illustrated with more than 100 archival images. “Set against a grand landscape that inspires both awe and terror, The Forgotten History of America depicts a continent emerging as both a bloody battleground between Native Americans and Europeans and a place where alien cultures began to mesh.” —Joseph Cummins, author of The World’s Bloodiest History

In a riveting, groundbreaking narrative, Russell Shorto tells the story of New Netherland, the Dutch colony which pre-dated the Pilgrims and established ideals of tolerance and individual rights that shaped American history. "Astonishing . . . A book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past." --The New York Times When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its records–recently declared a national treasure–are now being translated. Russell Shorto draws on this remarkable archive in The Island at the Center of the World, which has been hailed by The New York Times as “a book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past.” The Dutch colony pre-dated the “original” thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.

King Philip's War--one of America's first and costliest wars--began in 1675 as an Indian raid on several farms in Plymouth Colony, but quickly escalated into a full-scale war engulfing all of southern New England. At once an in-depth history of this pivotal war and a guide to the historical sites where the ambushes, raids, and battles took place, King Philip's War expands our understanding of American history and provides insight into the nature of colonial and ethnic wars in general. Through a careful reconstruction of events, first-person accounts, period illustrations, and maps, and by providing information on the exact locations of more than fifty battles, King Philip's War is useful as well as informative. Students of history, colonial war buffs, those interested in Native American history, and anyone who is curious about how this war affected a particular New England town, will find important insights into one of the most seminal events to shape the American mind and continent.