I think "thescalpel" wrote a very useful and accurate review of this book, so I won't say as much about it as I normally would other than to say that I consider this book an outstanding example of intellectual and cultural history. If you first read a book that covers the historical events of colonial America, you'll find this book very interesting and enjoyable.
Unfortunately, I cannot yet whole-heartedly recommend a single book on American colonial history. I read "American Colonies: The Settling of North America" by Alan Taylor from 2002 and think it is a good book but do not think it covers essential historical events within the original 13 colonies fully enough; the problem is that Taylor gives too much space to colonizations that occurred in other regions of North America such as Mexico, the Pacific Coast, and Alaska. Everything he writes is interesting but is not really relevant to understanding the history of the early United States.
I searched Amazon today and found "Colonial America: A History, 1565 - 1776" by Richard Middleton. This appears to be a high school or college textbook originally written in 1992 but currently in its third edition printed in 2002. Looking at the table of contents, it seems that this book might be better focused on colonial U.S. history than Taylor's book; one thing that appeals to me is that he provides some of the British political and economic history which are important backgroud to understand why people emmigrated to America and why the Americans ultimately declared independence from Great Britain. On the other hand, the fact that his first sentence refers to "the European invasion of North America" strikes me as excessively politically correct; while the colonization of North America by Europeans was ultimately tragic for the Native Americans, I find the word "invasion" too strong. But I think I might actually buy his book and read it anyway.
One last note: it appears that many of the negative reviews of this book are by high school students who were forced to read it. If you discounted their reviews, I think this book would have an average rating of 4.5 or 5 stars. I have not yet read the two sequels by Boorstin but plan to do so.
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