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Exploration of America: Home

This guide contains information on McKee Library's collection of resources relating to the discovery of America, including recommended books for further reading, films, research, databases, reference works, and more.

Discover of America

This guide contains information on McKee Library's collection of resources relating to the exploration of America, including recommended books for further reading, films, research, databases, reference works, and more.

Featured Works

The Year 1000

From celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a groundbreaking work of history showing that bold explorations and daring trade missions connected all of the world's great societies for the first time at the end of the first millennium. People often believe that the years immediately prior to AD 1000 were, with just a few exceptions, lacking in any major cultural developments or geopolitical encounters, that the Europeans hadn't yet reached North America, and that the farthest feat of sea travel was the Vikings' invasion of Britain. But how, then, to explain the presence of blonde-haired people in Maya temple murals at Chichén Itzá, Mexico? Could it be possible that the Vikings had found their way to the Americas during the height of the Maya empire? Valerie Hansen, an award-winning historian, argues that the year 1000 was the world's first point of major cultural exchange and exploration. Drawing on nearly thirty years of research, she presents a compelling account of first encounters between disparate societies, which sparked conflict and collaboration eerily reminiscent of our contemporary moment. For readers of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, The Year 1000 is an intellectually daring, provocative account that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about how the modern world came to be. It will also hold up a mirror to the hopes and fears we experience today.

This Land Is Their Land

Ahead of the 400th Anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, a new look at the Plymouth colony's founding events, told for the first time from the perspective of the Wampanoag natives. In March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief) Ousamequin (Massasoit) and Plymouth's governor John Carver declared their people's friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousmaequin and ninety of his men then visited Plymouth for the "First Thanksgiving." The treaty remained operative until King Philip's War in 1675, when fifty years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end. 400 years after that famous meal, historian David J. Silverman sheds a profound new light on the events that led to the creation, and bloody dissolution, of this alliance. From the vantage of the Wampanoag Indians, Silverman deepens the narrative to consider tensions that developed well before 1620 and lasted long after the devastating war tracing the Wampanoags' ongoing struggle for self-determination up to this very day. This unsettling history reveals why some modern Native people hold a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving, a holiday which celebrates a myth of colonialism and white proprietorship of the United States. No Reason to Give Thanks shows that it is time to rethink how we, as a pluralistic nation, tell the history of Thanksgiving.

1619

The essential history of the extraordinary year in which American democracy and American slavery emerged hand in hand in colonial Virginia. Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly -- the first gathering of a representative governing body in America -- came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America. In 1619, historian James Horn sheds new light on the year that gave birth to the great paradox of our nation: slavery in the midst of freedom. This portentous year marked both the origin of the most important political development in American history, the rise of democracy, and the emergence of what would in time become one of the nation's greatest challenges: the corrosive legacy of racial inequality that has afflicted America since its beginning.

Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes

At the heart of this landmark collection of essays rests a single question: What impact, good or bad, immediate or long-range, did Lewis and Clark's journey have on the Indians whose homelands they traversed? The nine writers in this volume each provide their own unique answers; from Pulitzer prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, who offers a haunting essay evoking the voices of the past; to Debra Magpie Earling's illumination of her ancestral family, their survival, and the magic they use to this day; to Mark N. Trahant's attempt to trace his own blood back to Clark himself; and Roberta Conner's comparisons of the explorer's journals with the accounts of the expedition passed down to her. Incisive and compelling, these essays shed new light on our understanding of this landmark journey into the American West.

Marooned

For readers of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower, a revolutionary argument for replacing Plymouth Rock with Jamestown as America's founding myth. In school, students are taught two origin stories for Colonial America. The first is the story of the pilgrims- hardworking, devoted, religious people who made a colony and thrived. The second is that of Jamestown, where lazy louts committed treasonous acts and nearly starved to death before they were rescued by food supplies and martial law from England. But both of these interpretations come from English sources- they were written up by the very governors and lords the American people threw off roughly 150 years later. In Marooned, Joseph Kelly reexamines the events of Jamestown and comes to a radically different and decidedly American interpretation of these first Virginians. In this gripping account of shipwrecks and mutiny and America 's earliest settlements, Kelly argues that the colonists at Jamestown were literally and figuratively marooned, cut loose from civilization, and cast into a state of nature. In Jamestown, the British caste system meant little- those who wanted to survive needed to work and fight and intermingle with the nearby native populations. The desperation of the colony meant that for the first time, centuries before Locke or Jefferson penned the words, all men were equal, and the colonists themselves began to insist on being their own masters and choosing their own fates.

Mayflower

"Vivid and remarkably fresh...Philbrick has recast the Pilgrims for the ages."--The New York Times Book Review Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History New York Times Book Review Top Ten books of the Year With a new preface marking the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower. How did America begin? That simple question launches the acclaimed author of In the Hurricane's Eye and Valiant Ambition on an extraordinary journey to understand the truth behind our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. As Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims, the story of Plymouth Colony was a fifty-five year epic that began in peril and ended in war. New England erupted into a bloody conflict that nearly wiped out the English colonists and natives alike. These events shaped the existing communites and the country that would grow from them.

1421, the year China discovered America?

Did a daring Chinese admiral sailing the world's largest wooden armada reach America 71 years before Columbus? This program examines the mystery surrounding the sailing exploits of the legendary Admiral Zheng He and his 30-year command of a Ming fleet. Part one discusses his known voyages to Asia and Africa; part two discusses the controversial theory that he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and sailed on to America.

1493

A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world, from the bestselling author of 1491. Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City--where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted--the center of the world. In this history, Mann uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars. In 1493, Mann has again given readers an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

Discovering Florida- Ebook

"Gives voice to a period in U.S. history that remains virtually unknown, even to specialists in the field."--J. Michael Francis, coauthor of Murder and Martyrdom in Spanish Florida   "With these transcriptions and translations, Worth provides an important service to ethnohistorians, archaeologists, and others who share an interest in the Spanish colonial explorations of the greater Southeast."--Mariah F. Wade, author of Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans   "A model for how to handle important primary sources. The historical introduction is a treasure in its own right."--Amy Turner Bushnell, author of Situado and Sabana: Spain's Support System for the Presidio and Mission provinces of Florida   Florida's lower gulf coast was a key region in the early European exploration of North America, with an extraordinary number of first-time interactions between Spaniards and Florida's indigenous cultures. Discovering Florida compiles all the major writings of Spanish explorers in the area between 1513 and 1566.             Including transcriptions of the original Spanish documents as well as English translations, this volume presents--in their own words--the experiences and reactions of Spaniards who came to Florida with Juan Ponce de León, Pánfilo de Narváez, Hernando de Soto, and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. These accounts, which have never before appeared together in print, provide an astonishing glimpse into a world of indigenous cultures that did not survive colonization. With introductions to the primary sources, extensive notes, and a historical overview of Spanish exploration in the region, this book offers an unprecedented firsthand view of La Florida in the earliest stages of European conquest.

Making Haste from Babylon

Backed by privateering aristocrats, London merchants, and xenophobic politicians, they were sectarian religious radicals who lived double and treble lives: entrepreneurs as well as evangelicals, rebels as well as Christian idealists. Far from the storybook figures of American mythology, the Pilgrims were complex men and women, and Making Haste from Babylon tells their story in unrivaled depth. Within a decade of landing, and despite crisis and catastrophe, the Pilgrims built a thriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on trade in beaver fur, corn, and cattle, and in doing so they laid the foundations for Massachusetts, New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of previously untapped or neglected evidence--from archives in England, Ireland, and the United States--British author Nick Bunker gives a vivid, strikingly original account of the Mayflower project. From the rural kingdom of James I to industrial Holland and the beaver ponds of Maine, he weaves a rich narrative combining religion, politics, money, science, and the sea. A meticulously researched, revelatory book that restores the potency of the Mayflower story by rediscovering the full international context of its time.

The History of the United States - Pre-History through 1699

This program takes us from the earliest settlements of North America through the arrivals of the Vikings, Europeans and Colonial America. Learn about European roots and how America was different before Europeans arrived and ask the question - "What was Christopher Columbus looking for?"

Source: Kanopy

Library Databases

Research & Reference

The Discoverers

Inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Daniel J. Boorstin's best-selling book, THE DISCOVERERS explores our desire to extend the boundaries of knowledge. The film portrays this human passion by juxtaposing historic discoveries with exciting scientific discoveries being made today. Stand alongside Sir Isaac Newton in his lab in England, then travel to the present to observe Dr. Louis Herman working with his very cerebral dolphins in Hawaii. Filmed in locations around the world--from Europe to the southern tip of South America to Alaska's wilderness--THE DISCOVERERS reveals the passionate spirit of the explorers and scientists who challenge the unknown, hoping to inspire the pursuit of knowledge within each viewer.

Source: Kanopy