history / united states / colonial period (1600-1775)

Presents a history of the Mandan people, Native Americans who lived on the upper Missouri River for centuries in their teeming, busy towns and who Lewis and Clark wintered with, from 1804 to 1805.

Author Stephen Coss brings to life an amazing cast of characters in a year that changed the course of medical history, American journalism, and colonial politics. Featured players were Cotton Mather, the great Puritan preacher and son of the president of Harvard College; Zabdiel Boylston, a doctor whose name is on one of Boston's grand avenues; James Franklin and his younger brother Benjamin Franklin; and Elisha Cooke and his protege, Samuel Adams. In 1721, during the worst smallpox epidemic in Boston history, Mather convinced Doctor Boylston to try a procedure that he believed would prevent death--by making an incision in the arm of a healthy person and implanting it with smallpox. "Inoculation" led to vaccination, one of the most profound medical discoveries in history. But the public did not understand this. Outrage forced Boylston into hiding and Mather's house was firebombed. In the meantime, the colonies were chafing under the control of the English Crown and began thinking about independence, aided by Benjamin Franklin's skills as a journalist and printer. Between medicine and politics, the atmosphere in Boston in 1721 simmered for years and ultimately boiled over, leading to the full drama of the American Revolution many years later.

Examines the Revolutionary Era through the eyes of slaves, Native Americans, women, and British loyalists who lived along the Florida Gulf Coast.

"This work examines patterns of everyday life in the colonial South from European contact to 1770, documenting how they evolved over time and differences across lines of geography, nationality, ethnicity, religion, race, gender, and class"--Provided by publisher.