Book & podcast collection

Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America

byBenjamin Woolley

Benjamin Woolley reconstructs the founding years of Jamestown through English investors, settlers, Indigenous nations, soldiers, laborers, and rival leaders. Hunger, disease, violence, trade, tobacco, and political intrigue turn the 1607 settlement into a struggle for survival rather than a simple national beginning. The book places John Smith, Powhatan, Pocahontas, and lesser-known participants within competing plans for empire and autonomy. Woolley shows how improvisation and brutality produced England's first permanent American colony, establishing patterns of extraction, racial hierarchy, land seizure, and cultural conflict that would shape the country that followed.

Publisher

Harper Perennial

Publication date

April 1, 2008

Format

Print edition

Pages

320

ISBN

9780060090579