The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America, the Conflict of Civilizations, 1600–1675

Usually the story of early American history is told in tidy vignettes of homogenous settlers, escaping the bonds of an old world's stifling intolerance and blazing a linear course toward freedom. Here Bailyn (history, emeritus, Harvard; To Begin the World Anew) rips away the facade and in the process reveals a world in which the fragility of life and financial devastation were an ever-present reality. Moving geographically from Virginia northward and broken into concise snapshots, the story of people from around Europe and Africa and their encounters with one another and with indigenous peoples is all-encompassing and told with a flair that only a master storyteller such as Bailyn can accomplish. The book lends itself well to the audio format in spite of its more than 26-hour span. Henry Strozier's reading is solid and never gets in the way of Bailyn's remarkable work of historical achievement.