The Times of Their Lives

The Times of Their Lives
Author: James Deetz
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2001-10-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0385721536

The utterly absorbing real story of the lives of the Pilgrims, whose desires and foibles may be more recognizable to us than they first appear. Americans have been schooled to believe that their forefathers, the Pilgrims, were somber, dark-clad, pure-of-heart figures who conceived their country on the foundation of piety, hard work, and the desire to live simply and honestly. But the truth is far from the portrait painted by decades of historians. They wore brightly colored clothing, often drank heavily, believed in witches, had premarital sex and adulterous affairs, and committed petty and serious crimes against their neighbors in surprisingly high numbers. Beginning by debunking the numerous myths that surround the landing of the Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving, James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz lead us through court transcripts, wills, probate listings, and rare firsthand accounts, as well as archaeological finds, to reveal the true story of life in colonial America.

William Faden and Norfolk's Eighteenth Century Landscape

William Faden and Norfolk's Eighteenth Century Landscape
Author: Andrew Macnair
Publisher: Windgather Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2010-08-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1905119852

William Faden's map of Norfolk, published in 1797, was one of a large number of surveys of English counties produced in the second half of the eighteenth century. This book, with accompanying DVD, presents a new digital version of the map, and explains how this can be interrogated to produce a wealth of new historical information. It discusses the making of the Norfolk map, and Faden's own career, within the wider context of the eighteenth-century "cartographic revolution". It explores what the map, and others like it, can tell us about contemporary social and economic geography. But it also shows how, carefully examined, the map can also inform us about the development of the Norfolk landscape in much more remote periods of time. The book includes a digital version of the map, on DVD. Andrew Macnair is Research Fellow at the School of History in the University of East Anglia; Tom Williamson is Professor of History and Head of the Landscape Group at the University of East Anglia.