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Jamestown Booklist

 

 

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.

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Fiction

• Durable Fire
  Author: Bernhard, Virginia
  Publisher: Morrow $ 22.95 ISBN: 0688089003Date: 1990
  The recently widowed Temperence Yardley endures the brutal reality of 1609 Jamestown with the help of her husband's best friend. Their love story survives the next 12 years, as the colony struggles with incompetent leadership, uncertain financial backing, Indians bent on annihilation, and an untamed wilderness.
  Updated 11.2.05
• Jamestown
  Author: Sharpe, Matthew
  Publisher: Soft Skull $ 25 ISBN: 9781933368603 Date: 2007
  PW
  Jamestown chronicles a group of “ settlers” (more like survivors) from the ravaged island of Manhattan, departing just as the Chrysler Building has mysteriously plummeted to the earth. This ragged band is heading down what’ s left of I-95 in a half-school bus, half-Millennium Falcon. Their goal is  to establish an outpost in southern Virginia, find oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area. Based on actual accounts of the Jamestown settlement from 1607 to 1617, Jamestown features historical characters including John Smith, Pocahontas, and others enacting an imaginative re-version of life in the pioneer colony. In this retelling, Pocahontas’ s father Powhatan is half-Falstaff, half-Henry V, while his consigliere is a psychiatrist named Sidney Feingold. John Martin gradually loses body parts in a series of violent encounters, and John Smith is a  ruthless and pragmatic  redhead continually undermining the aristocratic leadership. Communication is by text-messaging, IMing, and, ultimately, telepathy. Punctuated by jokes, rhymes, “ rim shot” dialogue, and bloody black-comic tableaux, Jamestown is a trenchant commentary on America's past and present that confirms Matthew Sharpe’ s status as a major talent in contemporary fiction. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 11.27.06
• Argall: A Book of North American Landscapes
  Author: Vollmann, William T.
  Publisher: Viking $ 40 ISBN: 0670910309 Date: 2001
  Booklist LJ PW
  The third book in Vollman's seven-volume series of novels that examines the repeated collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers and oppressors, Argall digs beneath the romantic legend of Pocahontas and the betrayals, disappointments, and atrocities behind it, offering a moving tale of dispossession that will appeal to fans of history and contemporary fiction alike.
  Updated 11.2.05

Nonfiction

• The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown
  Author: Hashaw, Tim
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780786717187 Date: 2007
  LJ
  Four hundred years after the birth of English-speaking America, this volume reconstructs the true origins of the United States and of the African-American experience. Here, Hashaw explores the significance of the voyage made by some 60 Africans stolen from a Spanish slave ship and brought to the young struggling colony of Jamestown in 1619.
  Updated 3.30.07
• The Jamestown Project
  Author: Kupperman, Karen Ordahl
  Publisher: Belknap $29.95 ISBN: 9780674024748 Date: 2007
  LJ
  Capturing England's intoxication with a wider world through ballads, plays, and paintings; the stark reality of Jamestown, through the words of its inhabitants; and with archeological and environmental evidence, Kupperman re-creates Jamestown's formative years with astonishing detail.
  Updated 3.30.07
• The Virginia Adventure: Roanoake to James Towne: An Archaelogogical and Historical Odyssey
  Author: Noel Hume, Ivor
  Publisher: Knopf $ 40 ISBN: 0394564464 Date: 1994
  PW
  With clarity, authority, and wit, author Hume--writer, lecturer, and chief archeologist at Colonial Williamsburg for 35 years--now chooses to write about the two earliest English outposts in Virginia. He pieces together revelatory information from the most recent digs with journals, letters, and official records of the period.
  Updated 11.7.05
• Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocohontas, and the Heart of a New Nation
  Author: Price, David A.
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375415416 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW
  Unraveling the crucial roles of Pocahontas, Captain John Smith, and Chief Powhatan, Pagels offers a dramatic retelling of one of the great survival stories of American history--the opening of the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
  Suggested Reading: Virginia Stars
  Updated 7.21.03
• A Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America
  Author: Woolley, Benjamin
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 27.50 ISBN: 9780060090562 Date: 2007
  Kirkus
  Published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first American colony, A Savage Kingdom presents the bold, even reckless, political adventure driven by a sense of imperial destiny and dogged by official hostility.
  Updated 2.12.07

For Younger Readers

• Pocahontas
  Author: Bruchac, Jospeh
  Publisher: Silver Whistle $ 17 ISBN: 0152167374 Date: 2003
  Drawing from the personal journals of John Smith, Bruhac reveals an important part of American history through the eyes of two historic figures.
  Grades: 7+ Category: Nonfiction
• The Paradox of Jamestown: 1585-1700
  Author: Collier, Christopher & James Lincoln
  Publisher: Benchmark $ 31.36 ISBN: 0761404376 Date: 1998
  Booklist
  Discusses the circumstances surrounding English colonization of Virginia and the evolution of slavery in that colony.
  Grades: 5+ Category: Nonfiction
• The Serpent Never Sleeps: A Novel of Jamestown and Pocahontas
  Author: O'Dell, Scott
  Publisher: Houghton $ 17 ISBN: 0395442427 Date: 1987
  In the early seventeenth century, Serena Lynn, determined to be with the man she has loved since childhood, travels to the New World and comes to know the hardships of colonial life and the extraordinary Princess Pocahontas.
  Grades: 4-7 Category: Historical Fiction