Marooned

[A] stimulating history of Jamestown . . . a superb portrait of the founding, combining brilliant detail with epic sweep. * Starred review, Publishers Weekly * An insightful re-examination of the 1607 Jamestown settlement . . . Kelly's lively, heavily researched, frequently gruesome account gives a slight nod to Jamestown as the 'better place to look for the genesis of American ideals.' * Starred review, Kirkus Reviews * The U.S. loves its creation myths, and this mythmaking, myth-breaking history gives us a new character, Stephen Hopkins... Though Hopkins and those like him left few records, Kelly fleshes out the available glimpses with a vivid, detailed description of the settlement and its English and Native American contexts...Kelly's dynamic narrative brings Jamestown to life and shows how history reflects the present as well as the past. * Sara Jorgensen, Booklist * Joseph Kelley's Marooned is a tale of intrigue, betrayal, and redemption from American's colonial past. It is also a moving reimagining of the American story. Kelley's history of Jamestown shows that America is a community born of marooned colonists, escaped slaves, and native inhabitants thrown together by an accident of history, and that the creed of liberty inscribed in the nation's founding is not a foreign importation, but the unique inheritance of this potent brew. * William Egginton, author of THE SPLINTERING OF THE AMERICAN MIND * Joseph Kelly's Marooned re-tells the early American story with salutary attention to Native Americans, non-elite English settlers, and the dramas of shipwreck, maroonage, and self-determination. Familiar figures such as John Smith and Pocahontas get reinvented in the bloody story of Jamestown's struggle against famine and incompetent leadership. Most excitingly, he offers new figures for the first English Americans, especially the rebellious commoner Stephen Hopkins, who lived, labored, and sometimes resisted authority in Bermuda, Jamestown, and eventually Plymouth Rock. Hopkins's desire for liberty and struggle against aristocratic despotism make the marooned commoner a powerful figure for what was newly American about the early English experience of the New World. * Steve Mentz, author of SHIPWRECK MODERNITY: ECOLOGIES OF GLOBALIZATION 1550-1719 * Original and illuminating . . . This thoughtful and rewarding study should be taken seriously by scholars and enjoyed by general readers. It is an essential contribution to American history. * Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln on AMERICA'S LONGEST SIEGE * An important contribution to Southern antebellum history . . . Highly recommended. * Starred Review, Library Journal on AMERICA'S LONGEST SIEGE * A tenacious chronicle of the pernicious construction of South Carolina's slave-driven political orthodoxy. * Kirkus Reviews on AMERICA'S LONGEST SIEGE *