Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays

This book is a collection of essays and primamry documents with some notes from the editor. Each chater is around 30-40 pages and it is a good amount of info per subject on more generally unknown histories in America. It can be a little dull at times, but there is alot of great information on generally unknown American history and the style of presentation is very academic.

I took a Colonial History class at my college this semester and this was the assigned reading. It was so refreshing to get to work with primary documents for once, as all other textbooks I'd ever used only had a splattershot of secondary resources. Each chapter is divided into two sections, one with primary resources including letters, newspaper publications and speeches and the other with essays by leading scholars in their field. The readings are long; however, they are extremely diversified from tedious readings like William Penn's plan for Philadelphia to extremely humorous readings like a Maryland traveler who encounters a drunkard named Captain Scrotum in a Philadelphia tavern.

This book had a great price, in great condition and was shipped quickly. I found the reading not to be direct but rather the opinions of other writers. You have to figure out what the writers are trying to say is in conflict.

This book was great about illustrating themes of American Colonial History. Used in an Upper Division History course, although not difficult enough to warrant not assigning it to a lower-division American History course. Recommended.