The Brave New World: A History of Early America

A lively synthesis of early American history, now in its third edition.

The Brave New World covers the entire span of early American history, from 30,000 years before Europeans landed on North American shores to the Revolutionary War. With its exploration of the places and peoples of early America, this comprehensive new edition of a classic textbook brings together the most recent scholarship on the colonial and revolutionary eras, Native Americans, slavery and the slave trade, politics, war, and the daily lives of ordinary people.

In this edition, Peter Charles Hoffer incorporates the wealth of innovative work on early American history, including fresh material on

- environmental history
- the Dutch and French Caribbean
- Indigenous societies
- consumer goods
- mapping
- captivity tales
- settler imperialism
- power--who has it, who wants it, how it is expressed, and how it is opposed

Emphasizing how diverse and entangled the early American imperial world was, this edition also greatly expands the geographical scope of the book. An updated bibliographic essay offering short descriptions of relevant books, articles, collections, and anthologies rounds out the volume. Wide-ranging and inclusive, The Brave New World continues to provide students, instructors, and historians with an engaging and accessible history of early North America.

Peter Charles Hoffer is a distinguished research professor of history at the University of Georgia. He is the author of many books, including Sensory Worlds in Early America and Law and People in Colonial America.