Old World New World or South Was Right

Old World, New World: Great Britain and America from the Beginning

Author: Kathleen Burk

Kathleen Burk sets out to tell the whole story of America and Great Britain for the first time. Burk is both a fourth generation Californian and a distinguished professor of history in London, and in this book she draws on her unrivaled knowledge of both countries to explore the totality of the relationship - the politics, economics, culture, and society - beginning with the first British settlement at Jamestown and continuing through our current alliance in Iraq.

Library Journal

The stories of the United States and Great Britain are inexorably linked beyond the Colonial ties and shared language, a connection and relationship that form the basis of this original book by Burk (history, Univ. Coll. London). While there are numerous books about specific links between the countries (see, for instance, Christopher Hitchens's Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship ), Burk's study is vast and complex, assessing the total relationship. She ably addresses the political and diplomatic ties but really shines when discussing the cultural influences between the two countries; a fascinating chapter called "Nineteenth Century Travelers' Tales" explores the writings of British and American voyagers, including Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. The book is well researched-Burk used many archives on both sides of the Atlantic-and, though its heft may be intimidating, it is well written, with a strong narrative that reads like that of a shorter work. Highly recommended for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/08.]-Mike Miller, Austin P.L., TX

Kirkus Reviews

An ambitious, fittingly sized effort to distill the complex, contentious relations between Mother England and her unruly offspring in the New World. A native Californian who has long lived in England, Burk (Modern and Contemporary History/University College London; Troublemaker: The Life and History of A.J.P. Taylor, 2001, etc.) is particularly well placed to document that relationship, which has ranged from enmity to mutual distrust to close friendship over the past 500 years. There is plenty deeply buried in British history that explains why things are the way they are in America-for instance, the old law of primogeniture, by which the eldest son inherited the estate and his siblings got nothing, and for which reason "nearly all of Virginia's ruling families were founded by younger sons of eminent English families," men forced to go abroad to seek their fortunes. Much of this deep history is explored by David Hackett Fischer in his now-standard Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), which helps us understand, for instance, why so many Americans are grimly bent on religious fundamentalism (blame it on the Puritans). Burk adds materially to Fischer's kindred work by extending her discussion a couple of hundred years to the present and pointing out the cultural gap between the two nations that has grown since, a "huge and insuperable barrier" that GIs and British civilians faced too often during the war years. Strained by imperial edicts and colonial resentments, Anglo-American relations have lately been buffeted by a shift in power relations, as the British Empire disintegrated and cowboy politics dominated; Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown have learned that, perhaps totheir dismay. Now that the American Empire appears to be disintegrating, too, that asymmetrical relationship may shift-in which case a new chapter will need to be added to this long but always swiftly moving narrative. Exemplary historical writing, to be read alongside Fischer, with Kevin Phillips's The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, and the Triumph of Anglo-America (1998) thrown in for good measure. Agent: Emma Parry/Fletcher & Parry

Table of Contents:

Prologue Looking Westwards 1

Ch. 1 Conquest and Colonisation: 1607-1763 23

Ch. 2 The War for American Independence: 1763-1783 108

Ch. 3 War and Rumours of War: 1783-1872 189

Ch. 4 Nineteenth-Century Travellers' Tales 277

Ch. 5 Some Elements of Everyday Life in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 308

Ch. 6 The Turning of the Tide: 1871-1945 380

Ch. 7 Anglo-American Marital Relations: 1870-1945 529

Ch. 8 The Alliance since 1945 560

Notes 660

Bibliogmphy 748

Index 776

New interesting textbook: My Life or The Essential Chomsky

South Was Right!

Author: James Ronald Kennedy

An authoritative and documented study of the mythology behind Civil War history, clearly exhibiting how the South was an independent country invaded, captured, and still occupied by a vicious aggressor.